Tom Y

And a closeup.

Rick's spot on. The elongated loop would be for a watch fob.

KO's a nice Cross, and probably the one he was originally awarded.

Nice clean group. Is the EK marked?

Even your humdrum Militair-Pa? was embellished with the typographical equivalent of ormolu.

folded, with a little history on the inside.

And if you were GdC you got one with an official (now missing) wax seal

There didn't seem to be anyplace else to post this, so I'll dump it here

Tike was, when you said Auf Wiedersehen to the barracks square and put your uniform in mothballs they gave you one of these.

At 13x16 plus inches it's bigger than an Illustrierte Zeitung. I had to "stitch" six scans together to get the whole thing.

Remote link doesn't work for me. You really need a nice Epson flatbed scanner.

If certain parties in Germany will quit taking all my money and sending me goodies I'll get one :cheeky:

Thanks, Rick. I guess the '66 doc didn't survive. The Urlaubs-Pa?/Fuhrungs-Attest almost didn't. Speaking of which, are the entries for March and June locations in Schleswig? I can't really make them out, but they don't appear to be German place names. I imagine von Heister was the grandson of Leutnant-General Leopold who led the Hessians in the American Revolution.

I've uploaded larger scans of three of the docs in hopes that someone can do better than just decipher the odd word here and there. Maybe it will explain the gap between 1864 and 1870, and why , while still fairly young, he served at home in 1870.

Urlaubs-Pa?

Fuhrungs-Attest

Wehrpa?(?)

He said goodbye to the army in 1874.

and got his DAII.

He seems to have missed the fun in 1866, but again in 1870 he answered the call, serving this time on the home front, earning a KDM von Stahl am Combattanten-Band.

He got to go on leave in August of 1864.

In 1864 he went to war against the Danes and was awarded a KDM.

Although not what we expect to see as a Wehrpa?, this seems to serve the same purpose.

Introducing Wilhelm Heinrich Schoregge/Scharegge of Isingdorf. At the age of 23 he joined the Westf?lisches Infantrie.

Inquiring minds want to know :cheeky:

MEH was never known for quality, but even so.....

Well done. "R" made a very nice Cross. How did you restore it?

You be the judge

It was awarded to all Hannoverian participants in the Battle of Langensalza, Hannover's only part in the Seven Weeks (Austro-Prussian) War. Hannover won the battle, but, being surrounded by the Prussians, surrendered 2 days later.

Considering the total strength of Hannover's army was 19,000, we have a good indication of how many were awarded.

They were all named, probably due to Hannover's close ties with Britain and British tradition.

So I bought a bunch of these thalers while in Yemen, but the I came home and one of them was "different" (I wasn't paying attention when buying it). Can anybody help me out here - what DID I buy?

It's an 1829 Thaler of King Franz II, later Emperor Franz I, grandfather of Franz Josef, from the Vienna mint. Much less common.

Nice thread, nice medals and a really nice medal bar, thanks for showing.

I really appreciate your knowledge but have never seen any proof for that. Do you have or know any? Please don't mix up the Prussian MEZ2, the Prussian Kriegerverdienstmedaille and the (German) Kriegerverdienstmedaille that was instituted in four classes for Black soldiers in the colonies. Those are three totally different awards.

However two look absoluetly the same...

I've never seen any hard evidence either. I'm, just going by what von Hessenthal says (if I've translated correctly).