webr55

Good job!

I think I see faint traces of a cross in the center and the characteristic wreath around it - this should be Waldeck 4th clX.

Christian, could you do a real good close-up of the medal bar?

I know that type of lion... can't wait to see the inside!

Hm, seven... probably counting merit crosses and medal??

Thanks Dan!

IF someone wants to buy the medal bar, I would let my ribbon bar go to get them reunited.

Back:

Front:

Update:

The matching medal bar is right now being offered by the same seller. Beyond my limits however:

Lippe bar

That's correct. The awards are:

EK2 1914, HHOX, Saxe-Weimar Order of the White Falcon 2nd classX, Saxe-Meiningen Merit Cross, Hamburg Hanseatic Cross, Hindenburg, LS 25+12

+ EK1 + Saxe-Weimar Wilhelm Ernst War Cross

SUPERB photo! I assume the cord looping out of his pocket around his buttons there must be for a monocle?

Good idea, I hadn't thought of that!

Also, note how the two LS eagles on his bar are at different heights! Sloppiness?

BTW, I think I'll let this one go, as I don't collect photos.

I would have assumed by 1893 it was the breast star. My reading of this script is poor but I see the word dritter now.

The RAO is really confusing to me... Later in life his medal bar has NO RAO, he just wears the 2nd class breast star with oaks and matching piece around his neck.

I just found this photo, and sure enough, stupid me, here's the medal bar in presumably 1893 or so WITH THE BOW.

Why did the RAO come OFF the medalbar?

The standard progression was: RAO4 as Hauptmann/Major, RAO3 w/ bow as Oberst, RAO2 as Generalmajor. When receiving the higher class, the lower one had to be dropped from the bar - except when it was with swords OR when it had a crown.

That is the short RAO story. Rick can better tell the longer one!

Close-up of his awards:

Gentlemen,

ok, it is a TR pic, but I post it here because the awards are Imperial. I got this prewar photo on ebay - without a name. His medal bar, however, clearly identifies the general to the right as "Hitler's Chief Pioneer", the builder of the West Wall,

General der Pioniere Otto-Wilhelm Förster (1885-1966)

General 20.4.1938

KC 23.8.1941

Notice also the rare Wilhelm-Ernst-Kriegskreuz.

Chris

Amazing story and document!

However, what is awarded here is not the breast star, but the RAO3 with bow.

Claudio, that's a really nice one, I remember it from WAF. But strange, Kunstmann got only the Knight's Cross, while Pelizaeus made it to Commander grade.

Fear not, there is a solution to every riddle!

I dug a little deeper: Wilhelm Pelizaeus was, for twenty years, the Spanish consul in Egypt!

Interesting that there are the two rather high foreign decorations but only the PCO3 from Germany itself?

Judging from the DOA1908/09, the PCO3 was quite standard for someone like him. 2nd cl would have been a General-equivalent already. Maybe a RAO4 would have been appropriate - that's what the average university professor got.

But of course, other countries usually treat people better than their home state!

Very seldom does one see widows that are so highly decorated...

Yes, I saw that one too. The seller guarantees 100% originality!

Besides the stupid Widows cross (and the other stupid mistakes), there is one quite subtle error. The sword clasp "1916" is on the wrong ribbon, I think. It should be on the Carl Eduard ribbon. There were clasps for the Ernestiner ribbon, but no "1916".

and I'm not too sure about this one either:

and also this:

and this:

There is another Austrian seller on ebay. Some of his stuff seems ok, but he's also got this:

Anyway, both being worn together is NOT odd. What IS odd is how often we see-- and NEVER that I have seen before PRE-Weimar bars-- the 2nd Class silver medal worn WITHOUT a 3rd class in bronze.

I assume that those erroneous 2nds with no 3rds were simply Weimar mistakes.

We recently had that case with Claudio's Dr. Conrad Bobrik. He wore only the probably postwar 2nd cl on his 20s medal bar. I would guess that, under the postwar circumstances, only ONE medal was given out anymore.

Ah, the museum has some info on him. Born 1851 in Hildesheim, he went to Egypt first in 1869 to enter his uncle's company in Alexandria. For the next decades, he led various companies in Egypt (railway, electricity, water, co-founder of the National Bank of Egypt) and became quite wealthy. He also was continually interested in Egyptian history, financed excavations and so on. In 1909, he transferred his private collection back to Hildesheim, where the museum was opened two years later. In August 1914, when he was in Europe, the British government in Egypt declared him persona non grata and auctioned off all his belongings in Egypt. He was compensated for a small part of this in 1925.

The University of Göttingen gave him the hon. Dr. in 1921. In 1930, Pelizaeus died in Hildesheim. Apart from the Hildesheim museum named after him, there is still a Pelizaeus asylum in Alexandria.

In the German town of Hildesheim, there is a very good museum for Egyptian and other Ancient art, the "Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum". Now I went there recently and found - among all the mummies and sphinxes - a showcase with the decorations of one of the two benefactors the museum was named after:

Wilhelm Pelizaeus is listed in the DOA 1908/09 as director of the railway company Keneh-Assuan, living in Cairo. He holds a Prussian Crown Order 3rd class, a Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic (Commander grade), and a neck cross of the Turkish Osmanie Order. And here they are, well preserved, all three (sorry for the bad photo):

(Below is the document for his honorary Dr. from the University of Göttingen.)

I went through the 1914 dR and dL. No match.