webr55

OK, let’s discuss this in a phone call.

Daniel, I have to disagree completely. We are not high school students here who don’t know how to do archival work. You cannot dismiss all those as “secondary sources”. In that case you can throw all the cases that me and others have found in newspapers throughout the last years into the dustbin. You could have said this right away, that you don't like our second class sources: "I am quite suspicious about any Reserve or Landwehr or Non-Prussians mentioned somewhere with the HOH3X, which are not listed in the MilKab-File or where we do not have any official source. I am quite sure, there were plenty of nice little mistakes in the old newspapers." If you had said that right away, it would have spared me and many others here a lot of time. And then I don’t want to be part of this project anymore. You don’t seem to have any argument against my theory, you are just repeating what you said before. There is nothing that rules out that full colonels could have received the HOH3X at the late stages of the war. And you could not dismiss all my 5-6 such cases listed in this thread. One or two might be mistakes, but not five or six. Launhardt's obituary came from one of the most prestigious German newspapers. It has a lot of details, must have been compiled by someone with intimate knowledge of his career, most probably someone from his regiment or other unit. To simply ignore this, is just arrogance, sorry. You still seem to think there are some genuine “sources” against which you can check whether someone “really” got the HHOX. There is not. There is much more uncertainty, in German sources as well as elsewhere. I would like to remind you: years ago, YOU asked for help here.

The other similar cases that we have had here in this thread were: Kap zS Gygas, GM Karl von Kraewel, and possibly the later GL Carl Briese (not certain). But that makes 5-6 cases already.

I mean, just to be clear: There were definitely officers who got the HOH3X at the rank of Oberst, this is known and nothing new. Some examples are v. Berendt, v. Eulitz, Frotscher, Martin v. Oldershausen, v. Wrisberg etc. We have more than 30 in our list. However, almost all of these got the award in 1915 or early 1916. The last ones I find are: Nehbel: July 1916 v. Estorff: Jan 1917 and two Kap zS: Roehr: Jan 1918 Franck: June 1918 That is the point: There must be more, who got the HOH3X after mid-1916. Schmettow and Launhardt are two of them, and there will probably be many more.

Exactly! And yes, the HOH3Xs of neither Schmettow or Launhardt are listed in the MWB. But that is the point of this thread and of all the work that we have been doing for years: find awards that are not listed there. And we have found many of them, especially from the last months of the war. They cannot be from early in the war.

If you have been looking at the data and the lists for so long, this is clear: we have no awards in 1914 and extremely few ones in 1915. The HHOX only really started to take off in 1916, when it became clear that this would not be just a short war. Even if Schmettow or Launhardt (who must have had a similar promotion date to Oberst) had been awarded the HOH3X in a regular way before April 1915, we would have known by now. The ones we are missing cannot be early war ones, they must be from later in the war. My point is also: The HOH3X was seen as the intermediate step to the PLM (which very few got). And this is not new, you find it all over newspaper articles from that time. So HOH3X became gradually more prestigious, during the war. Yes, there were still the Crown Order X grades etc., but higher grade officers (if they didn't get the PLM) probably would have been happy to have at least the HOH3X as this intermediate step. And here we have now two cases, and we had other suspects before. This is a pattern.

According to Daniel, we are still lacking around 40-50 regular (not reserve) officers with HOH3X. But judging by the (significant) progress we have made here during the last 3 years, we should have found much more of those. Instead, if we find any new HOH3X officers at all, they are mostly reserve ones, LtdR and the like. My theory was, and still is, that we are missing a number of regular HOH3X officers, because during WW1, the HOH3X got awarded to at least Oberst ranks as well, and these awards may not have been announced or made public in the same way as others (without the obituary, we would never have known of the HOH3X for Launhardt). Maybe the Hohenzollern House Order was regarded as quite prestigious during that time, more prestigious than a Kronenorden. Maybe also at some point you needed to have something you could award to officers of that seniority, who already had a lot of other awards. I had this suspicion several times during the last years (there were several cases which made me doubt the official story). But now we have a clear case. And not just one, there is more: char. GL Richard B. G. Graf Schmettow (1865-1938), who was promoted to Oberst in April 1915 already, and then to GenMaj with the same date as Launhardt, also is listed with the HOH3X (explicitly the "Ritterkreuz"): https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Personenregister/S/SchmettowRichardGrafv.htm And again, he is not in our lists either. This cannot be dismissed anymore as another individual case. There is a pattern here. Probably more Oberst-plus rank officers received this award, and those are not listed. That's where the missing 40-50 regular officers hide. And we could only find them by chance, such as finding an obituary like Launhardt's. But this is nothing we can count on. So this kind of search is futile.

Now here is something important which might confirm a theory I have had for a while. It might help explain why we still seem to be missing a number of regular officers as HOH3X recipients. This is the obituary for Generalmajor Franz Launhardt (1866-1925), from Hannoverscher Kurier, 27.7.1925. The obituary is very detailed, and it explicitly states that he was awarded the "Ritterkreuz des Hohenzollernschen Hausordens mit Schwertern". He is not in our lists, though. And I don't think the Kurier, which was a major newspaper in its time, made a mistake here. Normally, yes, the HOH3X was only awarded up to Oberstleutnant. An Oberst would already have received a higher Kronenorden (sometimes Roter Adlerorden) with swords. But Launhardt was already promoted to Generalmajor with the date 20.09.1918. Which means, he must have got his HOH3X as Oberst. And that opens up a lot of doors.

One of the two Lt dR Schönberg in our list must be the later Prof. Dr. Fritz Schönberg (1897 in Gartz - 1963): https://gepris-historisch.dfg.de/person/5110981 Hannoverscher Kurier, 9.4.1935

Here is some more info on some Müller, though I couldn't find his first name and cannot tell who this would be in our list: Landesoberbaurat (in 1938) Müller (-Hannover), obviously born in 1888, Pionier Officer during the war Hannoverscher Kurier, 13.5.1938 Some more info on Ernst Dieterichs: Hannoverscher Kurier, 10.9.1934

Arnold von Bolko is not in our list, but is it a Royal HOH? SPZ, 27.2.1923

Not sure: is that Karl Maaß? In any case, he was killed as Polizei-Hauptmann in 1921: 8.4.1921

Ryll died in 1919: 6.9.1919 Baumert is Fritz, died in 1920: 19.11.1920

Schlesische Privilegierte Zeitung is a good source, Matty! 8.12.1918, Ulrich Kaufmann should be a new first name: 20.2.1919, RM dR v. Rohr was KIA in 1918:

Looks very good!