Dave Danner

Hi Jan, Nice examples, especially with the devices. There is at least one book, but it is only a small paperback, and it is mainly a price guide, but at least it has pictures. I do not know where it might be available. Československá vyznamenání 1918-1948, by Ludvík Sukeník and Vlastislav Novotný, published in 1997. Here are the cover and two sample pages: http://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_02_2014/post-432-0-07530600-1392068768.jpghttp://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_02_2014/post-432-0-95485500-1392068775.jpghttp://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_02_2014/post-432-0-71140100-1392068784.jpg Regards, Dave

It is signed by whoever was Biehler's Adjutant "I.A." ("im Auftrag", or on behalf of) the Festungskommandant.

The signature is Otto Kuschow: http://verwaltungshandbuch.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/kuschow-otto I increased the image by 400%. Based on how regular the pattern of dots are, I'd say facsimile.

Eduard Schultze was born on 22 May 1849 in Lehrte, Hannover. He retired as a Major and was still alive at the time of the 1908/09 Deutsche Ordens-Almanach. Besides the EK2, he also had: Hannover: Langensalza Medal Mecklenburg-Schwerin: 1870 Military Merit Cross Prussia: Order of the Red Eagle 4th Class Prussia: 1870/71 War Commemorative Medal Prussia: Officer's 25-Year Service Cross Prussia: Kaiser Wilhelm I Centenary Medal Regards

That fits perfectly, Chris. A aubject of the Grand Duke, whose skill would be of more use in a pioneer batallion than in the Grand Duke's infantry regiment, IR 94.

Maybe you can figure this out? Most cases obviously arose in the Balkans and Turkey.

Manstein wore the Hohenzollern House Order. You can see examples of devices in Rick's gallery here: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php/gallery/album/344-ribbon-bar-devices-gallery/

Oldenburg's peacetime contingent was IR 91, DR 19 and I./FAR 62, but the Grand Duchy fielded more units during the war. Among these were: • Inf.-Rgt. Nr. 411, formerly Inf.-Rgt. bzw. Küstenschutz-Rgt. Oldenburg, a mixed Hanoverian/Oldenburg/Braunschwieg regiment • I./Res.-Inf.-Rgt. Nr. 74 • Stab, II. u. III./Res.-Inf.-Rgt. Nr. 79 • Res.-Inf.-Rgt. Nr. 259 • III./Res.-Inf.-Rgt. Nr. 441 • I./Ldst.-Inf.-Rgt. Nr. 22 • Res.-Drag.-Rgt. Nr. 6 • Stab u. I./Feldart.-Rgt. Nr. 94 • Stab u. I./Res.-Feldart.-Rgt. Nr. 20 I do not believe the award rolls for Oldenburg's main wartime award, the Friedrich August Cross 1st and 2nd Class, have survived, but they may turn up someday (Anhalt's were reported lost, but later found in a castle where they had been moved for safekeeping). I believe the records of the House Order of Peter Frederick Louis are in the hands of the former ruling house, and there is a dispute between two branches of that house.

Crown Order, ironically, would not have a crown. It could be the for Red Eagle 3rd or 4th Class with Crown and Swords.

For officers, sometimes. Not so much for enlisted men. With the exception of the contingents of the four kingdoms and the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse, there weren't any division-level state contingents. So being in the division itself wouldn't be enough. Divisions usually did not recommend people for awards, outside of their own divisional staffs, but would collect the recommendations from subordinate regiments and battalions and forward them to the appropriate ministry or chancery in the state. But there would still need to be a reason given, and for enlisted men this was almost always nationality. Officers sometimes got recommended because they "commanded a unit with X number of Landeskinder of your highness", but even these were usually rejected unless the unit had a really high percentage of such Landeskinder. I've read through such award recommendation files from Anhalt, Braunschweig, Reuß ältere Linie and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and for enlisted men nationality was typically the only justification accepted. And even that wasn't always good enough. The ministry or chancery would often forward the name on to a local magistrate to determine if the person maintained their ties to the state. If their family left when they were children, or his they spent the majority of their adult working lives outside the state, they were often rejected. Reuß was especially strict in this regard. Some states weren't as strict, though, which sometimes leads to those otherwise unexplainable award combinations. For example, if you were a native of Reuß but moved to Hamburg when you were 18 because you liked boats, Reuß would reject you. But if you were a native of Hamburg who moved to Reuß and spent most of your adult working life there, Reuß might approve your award. And if you maintained your Hamburg citizenship while there, Hamburg might also approve an award. Where does your PB 11 Militärpass say the guy was born or lived? Odds are he was from Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. BTW, of the divisions you noted, 25.RD was a Großherzoglich Hessische division. So soldiers there could be put in for the Hessian General Honor Decoration "For Bravery" regardless of where they were from. The other divisions were Prussian divisions with troops from multiple states. 10.ED was really mixed, as it had troops from 24 different infantry regiments, five field artillery regiments, two pioneer battalions and a number of cavalry regiments (I have no idea how Kavallerie-Ersatz-Abteilungen were organized). See the article I wrote here for a breakdown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_Ersatz_Division_(German_Empire)

There are three ways a soldier typically received a non-Prussian Landesorden. 1. He was in the contingent of that state. IR 32 in Meiningen and II./IR 95 in Hildburghausen were Sachsen-Meiningen's home units, and some 3000 awards of the SMM went to soldiers of those two units. Other units drawn at least in part from Sachsen-Meiningen included RIR 71, RIR 233, RIR 251 and LIR 32, which together are another 1000+ awards. 2. He was a native of the state serving in another unit. PB 11, being recruited from the region, included a number of Meiningen Landeskinder, and there were at least 150 awards to that unit. 3. The Chef or Inhaber of his regiment was from that state (or foreign country in some cases). The Chef of GR 11 was the Duchess of Sachsen-Meiningen. RIR 11 was the daughter regiment of GR 11. Some 200 soldiers in GR 11, and at least 17 in RIR 11, received the SMM. Other examples of such awards were Austrian awards to soldiers of GGR 2 and HR 16, Bavarian awards to soldiers of IR 47, and Baden awards to soldiers of 8.bay.IR. There were also some random awards to people with no obvious connection to a state, but this was more common for officers than enlisted men.

Well, the close-up isn't very close (what's the deal with the forum automatically shrinking images, even already small ones?) However, now we are back to square one, at least as far as the ribbon goes. The laddered edges are visible now. So that is in fact the ribbon of the Sachsen-Meiningen Ehrenmedaille für Verdienst im Kriege. Which could be either RIR 11 or PB 11. So back over to you uniform guys.

I really wish we had Rick's expertise on these matters, but nothing strikes me as bad with the double Waldeck Feldspange and buttonhole device. Sometimes even bad dealers get good stuff? Double Waldecks happened a fair amount, at least relative to the total number of Waldeck awards from tiny principality.

I'm not sure if it is worth posting in this thread, since it may already be derailed, but I will anyway. The topic itself is interesting to me, as I have an interest in speculative fiction anyway. I myself have worked on a "what if" where the Austrian/Hannoverian/South German alliance defeated the Prussians in 1866. But the Guardian article is really bad. In asking one question - what if Germany won the war - it begs so many other questions to be an exercise in logical fallacies. It assumes some sort of contrast between "conservative, repressive" Prussians and the German labour movement (which was also predominantly Prussian, by the way), conveniently ignoring, because it does not fit the post-1945 mythos, that some of the worst repressions of the mid-20th century, Soviet Communism and Italian and German Fascism, arose out of so-called workers' parties. And if Bismarck created German military power, he also created German social democracy, albeit to undercut Socialists. One of the big assumptions of a lot of speculation about a different end to World War I is that fascism would not have arose except out of the ashes of that war, but there is no reason to accept that assumption. Indeed, while there is good reason to connect the rise of fascism in Germany to Germany's defeat, that ignores that Italian fascism arose in a country that was on the victorious Allied side. Also, the author marks no clear departure point. He asks at one point what if Britain simply stayed out in 1914, but then really goes on to speculate about a German victory in the Ludendorff offensives. But then he mentions America's entry into the war being preempted by a German victory, which makes no sense since the US entered the war a year before the Spring 1918 offensives. It may have preempted most American power from reaching the continent, but it would still have involved making the US an enemy. While the majority of the US's involvement in combat came between June and November 1818, there were already nine US divisions in France in April 1918, and nine more arrived in May. And I love his assumption that FDR would have solved America's domestic economic problems in the 1930s, which ignores (1) whether the Great Depression would have even happened in his scenario, since the 1920s boom which busted in 1929 was itself partly an outcome of the war, and since the globalization of the 1929 US bust was partly a result of tariffs and treaties which also arose out of the war, and (2) the very real debate over whether the New Deal really "solved" the Depresion, or whether it was World War II itself that played the major role. He also seems to assume that a German victory equals a victory for the other Central Powers. Germany winning in the fields of France in 1918 would do nothing to solve the long-term problems of Austria-Hungary's multiethnic empire which were the proximate cause of the war in the first place, and there is even less reason to assume that the Arabs, for example, would not continue to fight against the Sultan. German victory would not have cured the "Sick Man of Europe" of his many illnesses, and a defeated Britain might have actually strengthened its interests in the Middle East and elsewhere as it turned away from the German-dominated European continent. Who knows what might have actually happened? The other elephant in the room, if you assume a 1918 victory, is the Bolshevik Revolution, which also already happened. The Germany with its eastern satrapies that Ulsterman notes might have been victorious in the West, but mired in a resurgent and much longer war in the East.* No Allied support to the Whites in the Russian Civil War, and instead a series of brutal wars between the Soviets and the Germans in the Baltic region and Ukraine? No independent Poland halting the Soviet drive westward in 1921, but instead Soviet support for a Polish uprising against the Germans and Austrians? An Anglo-German reconciliation as both conservative monarchies recognize the common threat of Communism? A serious "what if" about different outcomes to World War I might make for an interesting story. Mr. Kettle has not provided us one. ---------------------------------------------------- * Indeed, this is part of the premise of the post-World War II alternative fiction Fatherland, which the author mentioned, where Greater Germany is mired in guerrilla warfare with the Soviet Union and Hitler is hoping the upcoming 1964 summit with President Joseph Kennedy, Sr. will lead to a detente that will help the German war effort against the Soviets.

RIR 11 was a Silesian regiment. The only non-Prussian awards typically awarded to it were from Saxe-Meiningen, as Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen, the Kaiser's sister, was Chef of GR 11, RIR 11's parent regiment. I can't make out the ribbon below the EK, but it is not the SMK/SMM ribbon, which has distinctive laddered edges. That doesn't rule out RIR 11, as he could have been born in another state and living in Silesia when the war started. But PB 11 was recruited in the XI.Korpsbezirk, which included many Kleinstaaten: Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, the Reuss principalities, the Schwarzburg principalities, and Waldeck. So PB 11 soldiers had a greater chance of getting non-Prussian awards.

Karl Adolf Paetow was the oldest brother. He was commissioned a Lt.d.R. in RHR 6 on 5.12.14. Here are the next two brothers, Heinrich and Konrad. Although born almost three years apart, they enlisted on the same day and were both commissioned Lts.d.R. in KR 5 on 25.1.15. Would these be wartime Kürssier uniforms? Brother #4, Wilhelm, was a Lt.d.R. in KR 5 on 25.9.18 and was killed the next day. Brother #5, Rolf, went into the field as a Fahnenjunker in KR 5 on 5.7.18 and was severely wounded on 30.8.18 (shot through the lung), eventually dying in 1922. http://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_01_2014/post-432-0-50754800-1390679099.jpghttp://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_01_2014/post-432-0-69571700-1390679110.jpg

There is a thread here, which I thought used to be pinned: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php/topic/798-common-abreviations-for-imperial-medals-orders/ There is still no consensus on many abbreviations.

RHR 6 was raised on mobilization as the divisional cavalry of the 17. Reserve-Division.

Answering my own question, according to my scans of a book on hussars in World War I, RHR 6 was raised by HR 15.

RHR 6 is Reserve-Husaren-Regiment Nr. 6. I don't know if the reserve regiments were affiliated with the active regiments of the same number (that was not always the case with reserve infantry regiments, as some RIRs covered multiple regimental areas, and was not the case at all with reserve field artillery regiments, whose numbers corresponded to their reserve divisions).

Hi, I know next to nothing about uniforms. Can anyone help? This guy was part of a group of brothers most of whom were reserve officers in KR 5. However, I think he was commissioned into RHR 6.

The 1877 Württemberg court and state handbook shows the KDM70/71. No idea why it's not listed in the DOA. FAR 13 was entitled to the following clasps: WÖRTH, SEDAN, VILLIERS, PARIS

Since my father was born in 1900, many of his contemporaries when I was a child in the 1970s were of the right age, so I probably talked to a few veterans without knowing it. Other than my dad, I don't recall anyone talking about the war years specifically. My dad was still in training as a corpsman when the war ended, so he never made it to the front. Since the Marines don't have their own medics, had the war dragged into 1919, he could have ended up as a corpsman in a Marine battalion.

The Karl von Bayer-Ehrenberg with the Order of Berthold von Zähringen was Karl Friedrich Theodor von Bayer-Ehrenberg, *16.5.1848 in Stuttgart, †6.2.1908 in Karlsruhe. He was a Kgl. württemb. Hptm.a.D., and was a field artillery officer.

Here is some of the earliest color film ever produced, from the 1913 wedding in Berlin of Viktoria Luise of Prussia to Ernst August, Duke of Braunschweig. A lot of Garde-Kavallerie and the Schlossgarde-Kompagnie. When I was in Germany last year, I saw this also in a documentary about Germany on the eve of war. There was also some other B&W footage and a recording of the declaration of mobilization, which may be the only sound recording of the Kaiser.