xxx

see another interesting pic, this was the french Colonel Puaud in the charlemagne division. he is wearing the EK2 +KVK 2 in a unique style that is,imho, a mix between french and german practices.

soviet communiques of all kinds are allways to be take with a barrel of salt lying about anything was completely normal there

thanks, its plausible on my pic it looks more like EK, the other show it in better angle

have seen such pics numerous times,but now I see it realy Kaiser Wilhelm I. have two EK 1 on this pic here. of course, he had both, the 1813 and the 1870 and there was not a "Wiederholungsspange " then. not that I ever heard about a 1870 wiederholungsspange. anyone notice this before? I think in practise he never wear them together.

this is a colourful combination, thanks

thanks hard to understand what for a connection with egypt he had.

The dorotheum auction house in vienna have a 1936 czechoslovakien general uniform with ribbon bar. something you don't see any day. https://www.dorotheum.com/en/l/9383740/# looks like the soldier fight on french site in the great war. I see the WW 1 victory medal, cross de guerre, russin saint george cross, maybe legion d' honneur anyone here can determine the rest of the medals?

I don't think its Hierl, he was then 65+years old and this man looks to young for this. look at the ribbon bar of this man, could not be him. just start with the Hohenzollern house order and all the other high ranking orders from ww 1 a general staff officier like him would have. and the ribbon bar is not in the bavarian style.

its not impossible but must be one of rarest combinations you can ever find. if orignal this is one of the best and most interesting "german" medal bars I have ever seen. and only a medal bar also with a cross of honour could beat this. the owner must have been one of the french legionaries on the east front. someone like this kamerad but the german style medal bar is unusual. on pics you see the french sodiers in the wehrmacht with french style medal bars and the iron cross in the buttonhole.

a GMVK don't fall from the sky, if the seller don't have the name of the man it must be a fake. nobody will find such a bar on a flea market or find it on the attic long forgotten.

his south german style ribbon bar made it especially hard to identify any medals. the pic from january 1938 in the book show in any case an newer medal bar than the pic from 1936. he had then the iron cross gone from third position on his bavarian medal bar to first position following the new regulations. I find it very insolent by the auction house. sure they never say this is the medal bar of Hierl but they do all to make it look this way. if you take a lawyer they will saying it was never advertised as being orignal and this is true. it could be that he had the NSDAP medals but what I would missing is the westwall medal. I think reading once that Hierl had a special one in gold. can't verified the golden one now but this medal must have been on his bar.

The "Schrägestiche" were made very sloppy here and the faker do it more neatly on other bars. But it seems to me now he have a passion for colonial medal bars and you see such rare awards like the Militär Ehrenzeichen with china or africa medal on every second of his masterpieces.

real or the schrägstichfaker? https://www.ebay.de/itm/375867698608?_skw=orden+spange&itmmeta=01JG9MXCV3JJSDBZGGVGD8S12B&hash=item578375edb0:g:NrkAAOSwbh9nXvHb&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA0HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKnJo07pfWcM8ORITKVFmodQEg2zoc9KdJ5Zf4rcuUO0QBsx%2FJPQqU%2B2CIHMunfc%2FpJrvxNPhHu%2BDAEG3s8kRuMLFLdYw8696q13H4vj0gIIqYBJ1em22I24rZobIcKB3RPlJRk07G7lVDyh%2Bf%2BUdyI6u7f5uLWmsWNOTmt8qOZNBxCq70On9ietj8n0660nbIFZWOgJxcvUAay48dk97oSomUYvsWf5JX%2F5rPUE7zg82GV%2FCNAUo2qLgtga4jBnhLc%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR9DN9bSCZQ

a better pic from 1936, interesting is the EK 2 only on third position

having some time between christmas and new year I was checking auction houses for interesting stuff. I stumble about something in the next auction from Czerny's in italy. under militaria there is a uniform and a medal bar, the medal bar is offerend under the name of Konstantin Hierl then the head of the Reich labour service. his military career from the german wikipedia site "After attending the humanistic high school in Burghausen and Regensburg, Hierl joined the 11th Infantry Regiment "von der Tann" of the Bavarian Army in 1893 as an ensign. In 1895, he was promoted to lieutenant. From 1899 to 1902, Hierl attended the War Academy, which qualified him for the General Staff, the Higher Adjutantship and the teaching subject (tactics, military history).[1] In 1903, he was transferred to the General Staff's central office and in 1907, he was assigned to the Great General Staff in Berlin. A captain since 1908, Hierl was company commander in the 17th Infantry Regiment "Orff" from 1909 to 1911. He then worked as a teacher of military history and the history of the art of war at the War Academy until the start of the war. During the First World War, he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel as a general staff officer in the Army Group "Crown Prince Rupprecht". His roles included that of chief of staff of the 1st Bavarian Reserve Corps and battalion commander in the 23rd Infantry Regiment "King Ferdinand of the Bulgarians". For his achievements, Hierl was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross, the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords and the Bavarian Military Merit Order, Third Class with Swords.[2] After the German defeat and the November Revolution of 1918, he organized a volunteer corps under his name, with which he participated in the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Augsburg, Munich and the surrounding area. For a time, he was the city commander of Munich, where he met Adolf Hitler in 1919/20 and supported the German Workers' Party. He continued his military career initially in the Reichswehr Ministry and in the Reichswehr Group Command 1 and in the organization of the "Black Reichswehr". On September 30, 1924, however, Hierl was discharged from active service because he had supported Erich Ludendorff during the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch on November 9. However, it is still unclear today whether he was directly involved in the putsch. In addition, there were personal, professional and political differences between Hierl and General Hans von Seeckt that made further cooperation impossible. Hierl demanded that the Reichswehr become significantly more involved in the political events of the Weimar Republic, that paramilitary groups be given more support and that they adopt a more aggressive stance towards the victorious powers." https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Hierl what I learned here : a lieutnant since 1895 = Centenar medal ?, the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords and the Bavarian Military Merit Order, Third Class with Swords thats the way the medal bar is presentet in the auction https://www.czernys.com/a-146/?o=114675 they don't say its the medal bar of Konstantin Hierl but the arrangement makes it look like that. its no doubt the medal bar of a high ranking third reich official. the last three medals all together showing this because very few man were on all three events especially than also in memel. the backside of the medal bar is the braun of the labour service. I was looking for pictures of Hierl and find two in 1934. He would have change his medal later, no doubt, but I can't imagine a medal bar without his high WW 1 decorations. what do you think about this auction?

see the pic and knowing this was Heeresgruppe Süd on the way to stalingrad. there are a lots of pictures showing german soldiers with this helmet cover made locally from captured sowjet camouflage material mabe over winter and spring 1941/42. the best picture with this helmet cover is this here one soldier on the pic above have also this kind of helmet cover, maybe the same unit, pics making by the same man. it was common, have seen pics with german soldiers with helmet cover made from american camouflage material in normandy 1944.

a spanish mother wearing the iron cross from her son fallen in russia in the blue division "Aurora Borja, awarded the Iron Cross to her son Nemesio García, a member of the Blue Division, killed on the Soviet front. The woman, a mother above all – a peasant and wrapped in mourning – firmly holds the letters received from her son who died far from home. Fallen in Russia, he would be one more among those first volunteers who, of the total of almost 45,000 who arrived from Spain between the summer of 41 and 43, fought on the Soviet front, in a hard and implacable war whose reason for being, possibly, Aurora never fully understood." https://cbamadrid.es/revistaminerva/articulo.php?id=19

the only pic with a iron cross was this one. not much to see. so find an post war pic with an old soldier wearing this iron cross would be a gamble.

very interesting variant, found another one https://www.todocoleccion.net/militaria-medallas/orden-cruz-hierro-made-in-spain~x469653452

"Schrägstichfaker" strikes again?? https://www.ebay.de/itm/205108896244?_skw=orden+spange&itmmeta=01JCVB63NPG3SM8XJNQA0655QP&hash=item2fc17161f4:g:Kv0AAOSwqJpnNye7&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKmCpsgDVcUDHXcna1tShQUSlImFKE9XwsxUXhBlviJBASnLkplbFQODoETV9BXNrhSishX39SBkxEZw7YnScUCMK2wW6PEifCey8jsMU2uzX2uNPNjyln3bX9Uu36LySQY9vduucjPyYup9AnXu0Mx5BoGcVt3cdY72sUIoLqp5ti7yS35BVDH1qnVreros3atBgfde73sXP2GjJueU7Ea94zPIHTW600sNrKBwdtjeE1uZUP%2Bhj101IKS%2FmNJ8E8jisvTqMJJtagU4BGVWQu798fk3L9%2B9PTzpLKqE0POymA%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR_a6mOvmZA

not realy

a british graveyard on the swedish farö island north of gotland in the baltic sea , cholera deads from the crimean war

its true but don't forget they are are more or less outcasts in the bundeswehr of 2024

ok, thanks for the name, don't see this before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Civil_Merit_(France) maybe because it was only short-lived https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordre_national_du_Mérite

this are pristine looking medal bars, very fine what is the last one on van Hootegem bar?