lew

Thank you Andreas Hauptmann Leo von Gillhaußen was killed on the 6th of November 1918. Here I found a photo of the Gillhaußen brothers from gottmituns.net, Leo and his wife are on the left.

Can anyone help to id this bar? I've been told the owner was a long time adjutant of a German prince, never figured out the name though. reverse

Could this be Harry Gondi's ribbon bar? Found this photo showing Gondi wearing a long ribbon bar, also a TWM and a Silesian Eagle 1st class.

Yes I can only agree with that. Thanks for the comments guys

Greetings everyone! I recently came across this bar and thought that I have seen it's full size brother before, can't remember when and where. Does it ring an bell to you? Is this bar identifiable? If I'm not mistaken the bar consists of following: - EKII - Saxon Albert Order 2nd class with sword - Oldenburg Friedrich August cross - Anhalt House Order of Albert the Bear 2nd class with sword - Austrian Military Merit Cross 3rd Class

Here is the scan from O‘Connor's book. Do you think it's the same person?

He must be one of the 10 airmen who received the member cross of Hohenzollern house order with swords during WWI. Comparing the photo of Julius Tillmans in Neal O'Connor's aviation awards book vol.2, it seems to have some good match of facial character to our guy here. What do you think?

Got this one recently.

It's possible but I doubt so. The reason is there isn't many award could be placed before his HoH3 on lifesaving ribbon according to war time rule, I can think of a EKII but nothing else really. He probably have another full decoration bar with all his awards including EKII, and Turkish gold and silver merit medals. His EK1 was awarded in 1915 for his participation in the Balkan wars. By the way he did receive the HOH3 on lifesaving ribbon in the middle of WW1. It was gazetted in the Prussian State Gazette (Deutscher Reichs- und Königlich Preußischer Staatsanzeiger). The HOH3 makes me believe this bar might be his interwar bar that intended to show his glorious lifesaving experience solely. And he probably started showing off his lifesaving award already in WWI. I was lucky enough seeing a photo album of officer corps of Ulanen Reg14. The album contains photo of several Ulanen 14 officers including Georg Veit and his son Otto Veit, I was curious to see both the father and son served in the same unit. There are three photos of Georg Veit, one in civillian dress together with his son, and two photos with him in uniform and I could see he was wearing a light colour ribbon through button hole which might be for his Prussian lifesaving medal, his son Otto wears an EKII ribbon by the way. Father and son... From left, Lt. Veit, Oberst Veit (wear his lifesaving medal through button hole)... Veit (second from right) wear his lifesaving ribbon through button hole. His son Otto Veit... Another press photo showing him wearing his EKII ribbon and another black and white ribbon, could it be for his HOH3(on black and white ribbon)?

Stafen thank you so much for sharing this important information! I have received another piece of information about our guy here. Thanks to Daniel ! This article describes for what he got the Red Eagle 3. Saving a Lady at the Bosporus - and got the Romanian Star Commander with swords for the Balkan wars and the Turkish Gold and Silver Medals.

The swords are screwed in, not gold but silver or brass gild I think.

Yes it looks different from common Saxon trifold style, the medals are mounted by clip-on hooks.

Hi Andreas, I have no idea right now, will be able to answer that in couple weeks. What's your best guess?

Here is the Major Leopold Gottschalch's big medal bar, one of the best Saxony bars that I have seen. Leopold had HOH3X but for some reason not mounted on this bar, any idea? Some information I have gethered about our guy: Born 22th June 1870 in Dresden, became Royal Saxon Major on 11th July 1913 and commander of the I./ 1. Fußartillerie-Regiment Nr. 12. With the outbreak of WW1 he had RAO4 and Albrechts order Knight 1st class with the crown and got the swords to this award on 10th February 1915. Gottschalch received the HOH3x on May 5, 1917, and Knights Cross of the Military Order of St. Henry on 14th April 1918 as Commander of the Reserve-Fußartillerie-Regiment 12. Anyone got a photo of him or more information?

Gentlemen, may I have your opinion about this Red Eagle order with crown and swords? It looks different from Wagner made RAO4 that I have, and I couldn't really find any match on Andreas Schulze's web page of Red Eagle order designs, is it another known variant?

Anyone have a volume 5 to part?

This is one special cross, nice.

Welcome to the club

By the way the ones with name and unit number I have not done much research, if anyone have any clue about the recipients please help to share. Thanks in advance.

Having said that, I should have shown something now. Skip if you have seen these and don't want to look again.

That I can't agree more. For the ones that are not up to high standard I will leave them to other experts to solve since my gut has grown too big and my wallet has became too small I see my part of the responsibility (if any) as a collector in this area under current circumstances, is to hold the bar and keep reminding people how good the imperial standard quality could be, no matter they're interested or not.

My friend, you just made an old man very sad. Just kidding. Well that’s one way but not a positive one I have to say. All you need to do is don’t panic. There’re always better fakes in this business, and there’re always new tricks to detect them.

Logically yes, but I would like to discuss the matter base on exiting examples and fact, not if. Many detectable fakes we have seen so far already have high quality engravings, but not close enough to period piece, same as fake patina. For the possibility of particular good fakes that have already being accepted as original, logically it might exist but not to large number. And I’m trying to express here that we should keep at least certain standard and keep tracking the good ones. I know it’s just matter of time for fakers to develop new process and technique in order to make better copies, then we have see how collector community will adapt and behave in the future.

I’m afraid in the area of engraved EK, many of pieces(more than half may be) are hard to draw conclusion with and doomed to be in mystery, as sad as that. However if look at the bright side of it, it might not be a bad thing to keep high standard, and pass on the black and white part of the knowledge to new collectors. It happened in some collecting areas before that arguable ideas or objects have confused people, and eventually became acceptable along time.

It’s interesting to see people are discussing the same topic in different forums. http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=780113 In contrary gut feeling is not about judging various details on technical level, but taking an over all look. It's a feeling that have been developed over years by observing original pieces, not only engraved EKs but plain medals and all kind of period pieces made from similar material. It’s a sense that how stuff should look like after years of wearing, tarnishing and even damaging. The original EKs have engraves done first, then came the decades of wear and aging. It might be easy for a skilled craftsman to engrave a piece in certain style, but in my opinion almost impossible to do without breaking the integrity of original look of entire cross. Unless a skilled engraver could craft and age the engravings, at the same time preserve all naturally formed characters on the entire object without leaving signs, their fakes are detectable by experienced collector with gut feeling. Gun engraving is really not a sounding argument here since that only show how good the engravings skills are out there, after all you won’t take a modern engraved gun as something done during the war time. Anyway I have to admit the gut feeling, or relying solely on gut feeling could make people to overpass something which might be good. My personal experience is that this is not due to the accuracy of gut feeling when judging originality, in fact it’s more reliable than judging from separate details, it’s a personal taste thing. When someone have seen enough and developed a good sense of originals, it’s a tendency that only the best and elite ones are accepted, it’s not just only original but have to be up to certain standard, you can see that kind of desire when people show off their pieces.