Luftmensch

Rick and Rick--

I wish to take this golden opportunity to ask why we can't get more cool emoticons...have you seen the new ones over at the Drome? Do you have to be a moderator to use really cool ones like Stogie's burro or turbobarf? I want a burro, too! I know, life is unfair! Kudos to the less evil Rick for combining emoticons creatively...

I saw that case on eBay two weeks ago. Is someone trying to flip it already with a cheapo badgeo?

(Emoticon holding a sign saying more cool emoticons!)

Interesting, Rick. I can dig out footnotes for the following, if you like, it differs marginally from your excellent summary...

1. There were several hundred Prussian officers who were practicing Jews who served in the Franco-Prussian War. Many were decorated.

2. After the war, in one of the periodic reactions, the sons of these Jewish officers were officially denied commissions on the grounds of "weakness of character."

3. As a consequence, by 1910 there were no more officers who were practicing Jews in the Prussian army.

4. Like Loeb there continued to be Christian officers of Jewish parentage. These had performed so well as officer candidates that they had been taken aside and told to get baptised, as baptism "washes away all sins."

5. Rick refers to wives. There were plenty of Jewish wives in Prussian regiments. Poor Junkers found the practice of inter-faith marriage expedient and declared Jewish women "suitable" wives--to the delight of cartoonists and satirists. I have no information on highly placed Christian women conferring privileges on a Jewish officer. I do have instances of a Guards regiment preventing an officer's Jewish wife from attending regimental functions.

6. The most tolerant army was reportedly the Bavarian--most regiments having a token Jewish officer.

7. The Russian army had ONE Jewish officer--the Zionist hero Trumpeldor, who was so reckless in his bravery against the Japanese that he was presented to the Czarina (minus an arm) and given a commission by ROYAL DECREE. He later served in the Zionist Mule Corps with the British at Gallipoli.

I heartily agree that Loeb's service as a privileged cavalry officer with his parentage is H I G H L Y irregular and suggests some very unusual circumstances...

Rgds

Thanks, Glenn. So pre-war old prejudices were still pretty strong, though crumbling at the edges...

There's an old line about people doing things (in public and private), but not scaring the horses.

Most interesting, Les. I vote we replace your PLM avatar with a mortar board! I would be very interested in knowing if the appointment to command the Brigade was before the war, during, or at the tail end to know the strength of such prejudices even while monarchies were tottering all around. It's enough to make you clip the crown from your Flugzeugfuehrerabzeichen!

Claudio, I remember watching a James Bond movie in Basel...it did my head in!

There was a line of subtitles in English

There was a line of subtitles in French

There was a line of subtitles in Italian

I think I saw a line of subtitles in Romany

but by that point I was feeling dizzy. All I couldn't see was the picture.

You Swiss must be linguists from the cradle!

Rgds

Glen, do you have the date of the appointment?

Well...leaving Switzerland for now, what I find interesting about the German Army then was how much of a vehicle for social advancement it was. The lowliest leutnant had entree at court, whereas more senior civil servants or Kaufmaenner did not. So during the Kaiserzeit, it was a vehicle of assimilation for underclasses of all types--once you got a toehold in the Offizierkorps--those few cavalry and guards regiments that almost required an act of cabinet to join (and in one case did!) excepted.

Rgds

there were many more unsung enlisted pilots serving with the various types of squadrons

Dan Murphy

It seems an unlikely biography for a convert, in aristocratic Imperial Germany.

Postcsript to all you "purists" ......

If any of these guys could come back and speak I GUARANTEE you they would say.....

".....POLISH MY MEDALS!...."

"......STAND UP STRAIGHT!!....."

"......CLEAN YOUR PLATE.....THERE ARE CHILDREN STARVING IN SUDWESTAFRIKA!!!....."

and

".....GET YOUR AUTO...I WANT TO GO TO THE REEPERBAHN AND LOOK UP AN OLD FRIEND....HOW CAN I WEAR THAT HANGING BY A THREAD!!!!....."

Purists want PURE.

All others can trade pork belly futures for profits.

Thanks, Les! You guys approach these bars like museum curators! I can respect that.

But if I break something, Les, and you want to buy it, I'm going to attach a note in old ink swearing the cross was broken in `18 while my Opa Fritz was descending the main staircase at the Chateau wearing a sky-clad courtesan on each arm whilst riding a drunk Crown Prince piggyback with his baton sticking out of Fritzi's Fliegerass all while under air attack from Rickenbacker's flying circus...

(The emoticon wearing a halo and magnivisor on his head)

Rgds

He didn't have to be a red pilot. Few officers were reds. He probably had his badge "cleansed" on the whim of some soldiers' council.

C'mon you guys...

I'm trying to learn the subtle twists of collecting unnamed German groups...

If you had a group with a Bavarian MVO, let's say, which was smashed to smithereens...would you replace it? Would different stitching on the replacement medal make the next buyer suspicious that an MVO wasn't on there originally? Would keeping the old medal and threads to show him keep you from taking a hit in value?

By "group" are we talking "Orders, Decorations and Medals"? Or, Les, are you trying to put tunics, swords, scrapbooks and medals together? Or is the criterion what started out together should be tracked whatever it was? I like that principle.

My question is perhaps overly narrow and specific. With British medals there is NO stigma to getting groups, remounted, refurbished. They are all named and can easily be seen to belong together. I see Stogie's point--I think its peripheral to an earlier thread about comfort level with unnamed medal groups.

Question--if you can prove the medals came together and are still together, does it matter to you guys if the stitching is period or redone, as long as both jobs are professional?

Another question--what if you have a Bavarian Merit Order on a bar and the enamel is smashed to bits, would you replace it?

Ecktualllly....Les and Ed this is a timely thread, because there is a middle way--neither restoration nor fraud, which was NOTsanctioned by the Buddha of Militaria Stogieyama, whose side I'm sure you will take.

Some time ago I bought a Saxon pilot's group. The family dumped his book collection, papers were destroyed, I got the Becher and some related paper, and the medals are missing presumed lost among the grandchildren. Here is a picture of his group on public display in Dresden I believe several years ago.

You Hawkeyes can probably blow up the medal group, but it is an EKII, Heinrich, Albrecht 2nd cl., FA Silber, and Frontkaempfer--kinda neat since he started out as an NCO and wound up in Palestine.

I would make a dog's breakfast out of trying to mount 5 loose medals, so I thought myself really clever when I bought this on eBay (ignore the cross).

Now I could replace just two of the five for display purposes, and replace them if we ever found the original group. But I'm slowly gathering, as a non-medal guy late to the table, that original finishing is important--doubly so when you don't have names and impressions on the pieces. On the Allied medal side, it's no big deal if you take a tired looking group to Spink and have the tattered ribbons replaced with shiny new synthetic ones and the medals all polished and lacquered

before court mounted.

There...I've confessed...now I feel better....(the truly penitent looking emoticon here). If you are too aghast to answer I understand...

Personally, I think they would have done much better with Spink, or Dix Noonan, or.....Floyd Johnson & Paine!!!

Here are some auction lots that might be of interest, from an obscure house that has hooked up with Sotheby's...

Morton & Eden

http://www.mortonandeden.com/

Imperial German lots start here...

http://www.invaluable.com/PartnerPages/sal...HouseID=1103888

A couple teasers...

Not German, but interesting in an over-the-top way...

Rgds

Ahhhh...so that's how you put yourself thru college...and financed that fleet of Fokkers in your backyard...

Should we take up a collection . . . ???

Would you believe I was going to propose that myself? But with this collector it's not a matter of money...

Any one out there have, let's see...

nails from the True Cross

the lance that pierced our Lord's side

any Bonaparte body parts

LARGE fabric sections from the Hindenburg

stuff like that...only if it's surplus to your collection...and you were thinking of putting the stuff on eBay

Or maybe someone out there is a licensed therapist and can donate some couch time?

That's a great photo John... any chance of a zoom-in on Linnarz?

The res flys apart. As a photo of a photocopy there is zero detail. I'm trying to talk my friend out of his photo again or into a better copy to share...

But we have, somehow, gotten way, way on a medal group that deserves discussion. Two threads' worth, in fact.

Spoken like a gentleman...and I consider the delightful (and sometime enfuriating) eccentrics at OMSA and OMRS to be one of the few largely Nazifrei groups out there.

Digging through my files I came up with the only other picture of Linnarz I've ever seen, a photocopy of an original held (tightly) by a German paper collector who wouldn't trade it for Charlemagne's sceptre.

Taken sometime in 1916, it is of the crew of LZ 97, the last Zepp both my man Volkmann and Linnarz served in together.

Look at Linnarz, evidently a real fashion plate!

He is unmistakable in the center of his men, dressed in beautiful leathers, with his decorations festooned on the outside--EK, Observer's badge and, Rick, he already has quite a rack on him. Volkmann is the second standing figure from the left. I suppose this was on the occasion of an EK2 investiture, which means my man Volkmann didn't get anything for attacking London either until much later.

Agreed, Ed, except that the most popular vibrant area in collecting militaria bar none is 3rd Reich German....despite the snake pit that it is for collectors.

But the difference in WW1 values between Allied and Central Powers is probably for the reasons you state.

I have a feeling the relative values will stay relative, even as the coming tide of commemorations raises all values, because of the easy researchability of even the most common War and Victory medal. Imagine if EVERY Hindenburg Cross or EK2 could tell its story.

Great observations, Rick, as usual. A few reactions, in reverse order...

On balance, I think you're quite right that the Zeppelin commanders weren't A-rated celebrities. Maybe if they had those flashy Zep badges sooner it would've made them more conspicuous. Buttlar talks about pulling birds in bars, but I don't think that was down to any particular magnetism other than exuded by an officer's tunic. Zeppelin raids were front-page news around the world, and I still think you will find Wilhelm was more generous with his Navy Zepp aces. In fact, as I talk about in the Thor Becher thread, if there was hot competition between army and navy to bomb the prestigious targets, Wilhelm might have been disappointed his first team (the Navy) was beaten to London, after it had been first to bomb England. Could that have been why the House Order was so slow in coming? Not long after that Wilhelm shut down the army Zepps altogether!

Yes, when Detlev first sent me pictures of the bar he tucked that War Service Cross out of sight! Rick, do you have Linnarz's service record? I know his Zep service but nothing about his previous flying duties as observer or after the war!

As for identification and the higher standard of verification, Detlev sends a COA that contains color photos, his signature and a verification ink stamp on every page, just like a registered letter package. Then he folds down the upper corner of the multi-page COA and stamps it so no other pages of collectibles like missing Zep badges and other tchotchkes can be miraculously "married" to his group over time by me! Now that's verification of what he sold me to a high standard. But when individual medals are not named or impressed as on Commonwealth gallantries you just don't have that same high standard.

But hey, I'm not going to argue against my own group, as a cross-over collector I just notice the different degree to which one can be iron-clad, and speculate whether this is why Allied aviation groups are worth 3 or 4 or 5 times comparable German groups.

Rgds

John

Luftmensch,

Heres the next part of the story. The LZ 38 raided London on May 31, 1915. Isn't that the date on your Thor ehrenbecher? Nevermind, I just found the thread and it belonged to Volkmann

Dan Murphy

Exactly! And Volkmann was given the big iron plaque, without which I couldn't have d e f i n i t i v e l y identified the little iron medal on Linnarz. Up to that point, where was the actual proof? Which I think is what people feel deep down when they decide to pay less for German ace groups than for British, or American aces. And then, because these things are unnamed, no one can be sure that, say, a PLM hasn't been married to an Urkunde with Christiansen's name on it. So they pay more for the document than the PLM itself!

Everybody knows what Linnarz's group cost. How about the medals to the man who shot down LZ 37.....

Went at auction inn the 90s for I believe (correct me someone) in excess of 100,000 pounds.

THAT'S QUITE A DIFFERENCE IN VALUE!

(I suspect also if Linnarz had been in the Navy the Kaiser might have given him a PLM for his feat rather then the House Order.)

Warneford wore his VC for a few days, and then while taking off from Paris fresh from his Legion of Honour ceremony he crashed and died. I remember the French decoration was twisted and broken in the catalog photo where they had prised it out of his ribs.

http://www.devon24.co.uk/flatfiles/history/veday.aspx