Valter

One of my favorite figures of WW1! One of the last chivalric commanders, who was praised also by his foes for his impeccable conduct towards enemies and civilians of captured vessels. The story of Emden and especially odysseyade of landing party, strandled on Keeling/Kokos island is fascianting, much different than dehumanized technological warfare of western front. Despite succesful campaign of Emden, which was much celebrated in German newspapers, he was long denied PLM, as many reproached him the surrender of Emden after unequal battle with Australian cruiser Sydney. After his ship was totally wrecked and incabable to continue battle, von Muller lowered the flag to prevent unnecessary deaths of his brave crew.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your help! Landespolizei it is... and the guy in Chris' thread that Glenn posted looks just the same as my guy!!! The same decorations, mustaches, only in mine pic he has a bit more hair. Could it be the same person? Do we have his name?

Thanks, Dave, good eye! Indeed, there are Centenar medal and 1870-71 KDM. Prussian, I tried with high-res scans, but this is all I could get. To me it looks like two oakleaves with acorn in the middle - forestry? Some freikorps? Thanks for your effort.

Hello Bavarian, Slavs are not Asians and do not have asian facial features ? Some Russians have asian features, b/c of admixture with Mongolians, Siberian and other asian tribes/nations. And many russian citizens (with russian sounding names) are actually members of minorities. Former Russian defence minister Sergej Šojgu is half Tuvan (Siberian nation related to Mongols) and half Slav. That's not the case with Poles. But you got the right point - there is small Tatar minority in nowadays Poland, and some of them surely served in Prussian army too.

I got this old wedding photo - it is marked on the back Karl Braun, Phto Atelier Mkt (markt) Beroldsheim - it's a small town in Bavaria. The grooms decorations are BMVK4x, EK2 and probably bavarian long service medal, and cut-out wound badge. So the picture is from 1918 or later. But can anyone recognize the medals of the old gentleman on the right? Due to unusual shapes and ribbons I think they are some unofficial veteran's medals or shooting club medals. What is the uniform of the groom? The scan is high-res, but the original is blurry and that's all I could get. Thanks in advance for help, Valter

Really astonishing story and great portraits, thanks for sharing, Deutschritter! The guy surely had a dream-life: a millionaire, fighter pilot, war hero, beautiful young wife ... What else could you want? Reading short wiki article (and my german is quite limited), his story is even more interesting and intriguing. According to the article, he was denied officer status before WW1 because of his Jewish origin and fact that his parents were born in low social class (regardless they became rich later). And our pilot was a pacifist before WW1, financially supporting peace movement. Then he "bought and brought" his own plane as a volunteer ... Really cool! Even his portraits breathe a mature, seasoned man with both wisdom, determination and courage, a sharp contrast with the majority of other pilots, who were a generation younger. It would be very interesting to read a more detailed biography (book) about his life. Oh, I forgot one question, a bit off-topic maybe. Did his cigar factory survived? Or which company is its hier?

Gentlemen, immense thanks for your replies. Especial The Pruassian (Andy) for detailed explanation - there's everything one should know about ranglists. You also have a wonderful library! Great thank you also to Jens and his link to Polish Silesian library - it seems they are ahead of German libraries in terms of digitalisation! ? I will use these digital ranglists, as they are quite complete, plus I'll buy a couple as the real book is easier to search than digital one IMHO. Greetings, Valter

Really impressive array of decorations, from so many countries (not only German entities, including Denmark, against which he fought in 1864!). I believe he got most of the foreign orders as kaiser's adjutant in 19th century. http://prussianmachine.com/aok/plessen.htm

Thank you Christophe, much appreciated! Now I know what to focus on for the beginning. Greetings, Valter

Going into legal matter discussion, I can add (law is my profession), referring to Pauls and initial ArHo's question that fraudulently presenting thing A as being something else (thing B) is a crime, a fraud. I'm not sure what is the definition of fraud in other legal sistems, but according to Slovenian law, it could roughly translate as: Who intentionally wrongfully presents facts with an aim to deceive other person and get himself an illegal material gain, on the expense of other person's material assets, is punishable with up to 3 years in prison. So, presenting a forged (yesterday made) photo as 100 years old photo (which has substantially higher material value than modern copy), with intention to get the money one should get for 100 y.o. photo, and not just money for new photo, is a crime. Claiming to having for sale some medal or coin, that "seller" actually doesn't own and can't transfer to the buyer after the closed transaction, is even more obviuos fraud. The problem is, such international fraudulent deals are almost impossible to prosecute, as police officers of all countries have no time for such relatively small crimes. Within EU, some protection can be offered by civil law, with european small claims procedure, which can be filed in plaintiffs (buyers) home country. If a seller is a business and a buyer a costumer, a costumer can also file a lawsuit (regardless of the value of the claim) in his/her home country, with use of his own law (EU regulations "Brussels I" and "Rome I"), even if a defendant (business) is from another member state.

Hello Andreas, thank you for the link, I know and appreciate this page, but both Bavarian and Prussian ranglists end well before 20th century, so the most useful ones are missing. I hope they will upgrade their library, but until then I'd like to get some 20th century lists. Greetings, Valter

For research purposes, ranglists are inevitable, so I decided to buy some. Prussian ranglists are available from ebay for cca 50 euros, but I can't afford to buy all of them, so I'd like to get some suggestions which lists would be the most useful for a start (2-3 of them). I noticed there are ranglists of "active officers" and more general ranglists, so I assume the active-only are less useful. Which year do you suggest as the most informative, or "best value for money"? And which bavarian ranglists? Thanks in advance, Valter

Very detailed and accurate presentation by Simius. I'd only like to add some corrections about European laws: - by EU law, copyright expires not after 90 years, but 70 years after the author's death. - there are also a few exceptions (allowances) for reproduction, including: reproductions by public libraries, educational institutions or archives for non-commercial use; use for illustration for teaching or scientific research, to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose; (this would cover militaria and other research forums, IMHO) quotations for the purposes of criticism or review; (mostly for works of literature) use for the advertisement of the public exhibition or sale of art; (that would apply to ebay-sale pictures) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union And there's important thing that Simius already stressed (bikini case): copyright protects only works of art, with some artistic/creativity/uniquenss added value. That means, a shopping list is no work of art and hence not protected, but a poem, or aphorism, is. Photography must have some artistic value (in broad sense) to be protected by CR; studio portraits fulfill these requirements, but simple document face photo probably not. The same goes for photos of medals etc.: if you just make a picture for illustarive purposes, it has no artisitc value and hence no CR. I'm not sure about casual soldier's photos made in barracs or on the front (I didn't dig into case-law), but i think they should be CR protected, as thy have at least documentary value, like news photos, which are also protected. One more thing to carry in mind with photos of personalities is personal's rights (as part of human rights) - there's a "right to one's own image", which protects ordinary people from being photographed and published elsewhere. There are several exceptions to this rule, i.e. public figures or persons photographed incidentally in public places (i.e. if you take a pic of historical building, or public rally, and there are random perosns in the photo), and I also believe if someone publicly posted a photo of deceised relative for sale or otherwise, he/she tacitly relinquished claims for such rights.

Glenn, thank you very much for those great scans with additional information! It is amazing how much knowledge can we acquire about a "mere" Hauptmann who is probably dead 100 or so years. So, to keep Hauptmann Ludwig Poland alive in our memory, here is his summary CV: Ludwig POLAND, born 13. 4. 1873, from Nürnberg, catholic; father: hauptmann Decorations:

Wow, that's great, Leutwein!!! Any chance to see the whole picture? PS: I found about KB 4. IB, that 3 officers, 4 NCOs and 27 men volunteered for China expedition. So he was probably in the 4th IB before and temporarily attached to II. Seebataillon. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Königlich_Bayerisches_4._Infanterie-Regiment_„König_Wilhelm_von_Württemberg“