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    Just discovered this nice topic regarding Sturm-Bataillon....

    I also have to contribute something from my collection, directly received from the descendants of

    Fritz Kleineges, Wachtmeister at Sturmbat. No.5 (Rohr) / Haubitzen-Batterie

    - award document for Lippe-Detmold cross for heroic deeds (received on 11th June 1918)
    - the rest of his awards (IC1, black wound-badge, Feldehrenzeichen)

    Regards
    Roman

    Fritz_Kleineges-Urkunde-Heldentat.jpg

    Fritz_Kleineges-Auszeichnungen.jpg

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    Great find, Roman!

    Again another one, who is not listed in the casualty lists...

    Klasse Urkunde! Gefällt mir super!!!!

    Here three fellows from Sturmbataillon 10 (photo taken in Wilna)

    Sturm-Btl. 10 (Wilna, Gebirgshose).jpg

    Edited by The Prussian
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    • 2 months later...
    • 2 weeks later...

    Not exactly Sturmbataillon but I hope you excuse - this was always a bit of a mistery to me as this postcard was written by the man with the + over him - a Fahrer (driver) in FAR 74. How can we interprete this? Was he commanded to take part in some action with the divisional unit? And what does the date mean? I could not find any relevant action on it - a training course? Happy to hear from you!

    Cheers

    ArHo

    DSC00745.JPG

    DSC00745a.jpg

    Edited by ArHo
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    Hello ArHo!

    Well, FAR74 was part of 8th Inf.Div.

    June 12, 1917 they held the sector north-east of Loos. No particular battles, but heavy losses by British attacks.

    FAR79 was located near Lens. The regimental history mentioned nothing according to a Sturmtrupp.

    In the back left I see an infantry man with a monogram upon the shoulder straps. Infantry of 8th.ID were: 72, 93 and 153. 93 and 153 had monograms.

    The regimental histories of 93 and 153 doesn´t mention anything for that date. There were several reccon patrols of the division in summer 1917, but nothing special mentioned for that date.

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    On 04/01/2020 at 05:48, The Prussian said:

    Hello ArHo!

    Well, FAR74 was part of 8th Inf.Div.

    June 12, 1917 they held the sector north-east of Loos. No particular battles, but heavy losses by British attacks.

    FAR79 was located near Lens. The regimental history mentioned nothing according to a Sturmtrupp.

    In the back left I see an infantry man with a monogram upon the shoulder straps. Infantry of 8th.ID were: 72, 93 and 153. 93 and 153 had monograms.

    The regimental histories of 93 and 153 doesn´t mention anything for that date. There were several reccon patrols of the division in summer 1917, but nothing special mentioned for that date.

    Thanks Prussian - well that was what I expected, no specific action. Well perhaps someday somewhere I will find more :-)

    By the way - just today there is a nice Rohr Minenwerfer Postcard on german Ebay:

    https://www.ebay.de/itm/352918737559

    Cheers

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    17 hours ago, The Prussian said:

    Oh, that wasn´t a good idea... Showing ebay articles like this in forums will force-up the price...

    A good idea, if you are the seller...?

    ...which I am not, of course ? Just thought it would be nice to know for you here... But I get your point!

    Viele Grüße

    Edited by ArHo
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    • 5 months later...

    A little update on Lt.d.R. Alwin Zirkler from Sturm-Bataillon Rohr, mentioned several times in this thread and whose EK1 document Chris has shown.

    Alwin Friedrich Wilhelm Zirkler was born on 23.2.1889 in Saarbrücken. He was a Gerichtsreferendar in Trier. As a Kriegsfreiwilliger, he served in the Artillerie-Munitions-Kolonne 3 des VIII.Armeekorps, and later came to Pionier-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 7 as an Unteroffizier der Reserve before coming to the 4. Pionier-Kompanie of Sturm-Bataillon Rohr. In 1916 he was a Vizefeldwebel der Reserve and was promoted on 5.12.1916 to Leutnant der Reserve (Saarbrücken) of Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 112 (still serving in Sturm-Bataillon Rohr). I have no idea why he was commissioned in IR 112, let alone any infantry regiment, given he seems to have come from the pioneers. On 9.9.1917, he was wounded in an assault on Höhe 344 by Verdun. 

    Besides the Iron Cross 1st Class, he received the Ritterkreuz mit Schwertern of the Königlich Hausorden von Hohenzollern (gazetted on 20.11.1917). 

    After the war, he was a Gerichtsreferendar in Saarbrücken and was at some point promoted to Dr.jur. In the interwar-years, he was the Kommissarischer Führer des Stahlhelm-Bunds im Saargebiet. I cannot find a date of death, but there are a few other on-line mentions which show him as alive in the 1950s, so he may have also served in World War II.

    The full name and date of birth are from the Saarbrücken birth register. Most of the details of his wartime service are from the Militär-Wochenblatt, the Verlustlisten, and the Kriegslisten of the Münchener Burschenschaft Rhenania.

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    • 5 months later...

    Mindestens 1935 war Zirkler Führer des Pioniersturmbanns der SA der SA Brigade 151 Saarbrücken, früher Brigade 51.

    Zudem war er mindestens 1939 Wirtschaftsbeauftragter des Landkreises Saarbrücken. 1958 noch unter den Lebenden als Leiter des Vogelschutzbundes dort.

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    • 1 month later...
    On 25/12/2020 at 18:52, Chris Boonzaier said:

    A bit of a bidding war... but some Bavarian Sturmbataillon goes into the binder tonight.....0000000b1.thumb.jpg.6ec6ffdd4e56a5bf7c9fa7d8696bdf9e.jpg0000000b2.thumb.jpg.4aee3af05b98e7205b91ceefba4979bb.jpg

    Really sorry I think it's my fault I really wanted the horizontal because I already have the other and I found this one even better.

    Julien

    here is my copy bought last summer of the SB6 with a nice unit mark(I cannot read german so I do not know if the text is related) :

    f3.PNG

    f4.PNG

    Edited by juju1418
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    I also have this cool little photo showing a technique of crossing barbed wire. Soldiers are equipped with grenade bags, rifles and leather knee pads also each carry a kind of ladder. The first poses it on the barbed wire then they advance, make go up the other ladders towards the front then the pose and so on.
    I have not seen any other photos yet, but I do not have any documentation.
    According to the seller it is a training of the SturmBataillon n°16.

    f6.PNG

    Here is also this view of the SturmBataillon 5 Rohr quite well known (but it must still have a minimum of value) but really nice in postcard format even if it is a French card made with the negative found by the Americans. A wex squad in Argonne.

    f7.PNG

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    On 30/01/2021 at 14:47, juju1418 said:

    here is my copy bought last summer of the SB6 with a nice unit mark(I cannot read german so I do not know if the text is related) :

     

    f4.PNG

    The text is:

    Sent to:

    Hedwig Dellbrügge
    Düren
    Moltkestraße
    (? not 100% sure) 32

    Iserlohn, 30.11.18

    Sehr geehrtes Fräulein!
       Seit einigen Tagen gut in
    Iserlohn, wo wir jedenfalls
    noch länger bleiben.
       Ich erlaube mir Ihnen diese
    Karte mit meinen besten Grüßen,
    auch an Ihre werten Eltern & Frl.
    Schwester zu senden
                       Ergebenst
                         
     ???


    rough translation:

    Dear young lady (miss)!

    Since some days good in
    Iserlohe, where we gone
    stay longer.
    I take myself the liberty to 
    send You this card with my best
    regards, also to Your valued parents
    and sister.
           Sincere
           ???
     

    So a pretty generic text, with little information for us collectors

    Edited by Utgardloki
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    Indeed it is not very original but I could have noticed it with the date since the war was over on 11/30/18 I had not paid attention to it. Thank you for your translation and translation. I find German a very difficult language with a lot of very different writing style. There are some very easy to read close to French and sometimes fortunately it's a German card otherwise I could not say. On the other hand I think I have a postcard with an interesting text there is a photo of flame thrower and it seems to me to read flammenwerfer behind.

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    7 hours ago, juju1418 said:

    There are some very easy to read close to French and sometimes fortunately it's a German card otherwise I could not say.

    That's cause there were 2 different writing styles taught in Germany (the wohle German Sprachraum actually - including Austria, Switzerland etc.) Both in printed texts and handwritten ones. Everything in German was written in the German font, everything in romance languages in Latin font.

    For printed German text a gebrochene Schrift (broken font) or blackletter ist used, for printed text from a romance language a runde Schrift (round font) is used, the Antiqua (which it is the dominant today)

    They were very strict with this, even germanised words from romance languages were set in Antiqua. Here for example a book about heraldry, I was reading lately from 1714:

    image.png.c5a679b94326d65df5784fef3edd4c27.png

    Geneologie is printed in Antiqua as it has no German origin.

    It goes so far that when a word originating in another language, that is germanised, the root of the word is set in Antiqua, but the part, which comes from German grammar, is set in the broken font.

    Here for example Conversationen (english: conversations) has the Latin root "conversatio" set in Antiqua, but the ending "nen", which is there to make it apply to German grammar is set in broken font

    image.png.53d09f2b570a2b72d67524e600eb8f7b.png

    For handwritten texts there was/is also a broken variant and a round variant. The round variant is more or less equal to the englisch cursive and can be called Lateinische Schrift (Latin font). The broken variant,  used for German language words (therefore of course also in your postcard) uses almost (not really as still is just a style of the Latin alphabet) a completely different set of letters (at least one gets the impression it is so), which is oriented on the broken printed letters.

    Now it mostly is called Kurrentschrift or Sütterlinschrift, which both isn't satisfying to me (actually annoys me, but of course one can use the terms cause anyone knows what is meant).

    Why?
    First Kurrentschrift comes from currere (latin running, german laufen), so just means Laufschrift (roughly running or current font or just cursive font), which just means that the letters used in a word are connected (made without lifting the nib). That is also true for the round, the Latin font, it also is a Kurrentschrift which one can actually call lateinische Kurrentschrift (Latin running font or latin cursive), if one wants to. So in conclusion Kurrentschrift isn't a satisfying term to distinguish the fonts.

    Second Sütterlinschrift is even worse. It is a handwriting font designed by Ludwig Sütterlin in 1911, that is just a simplified, easier to learn version of the earlier used ones, that you can write without a flexible nib (the stroke has the same thickness everywhere). And now there is the punchline: Of course he designed a German (broken) one and a Latin (round) one. There are 2 different Sütterlinschirften. So again this term actually can't be used to distinguish both.

    How should we call it?
    The broken font: gebrochene Schreibschrift (broken handwritingor deutsche Schreibschrift (German handwriting)
    The Latin font: runde Schreibschrift (round handwriting) or lateinische Schreibschrift (Latin handwriting)

    It is actually no shame to be unable to read it, you have to learn it, almost like learning a different alphabet. Almost no german-speaking person is able to read it, the young ones don't even no it existed (I am quite young too, and most of my friends and acquaintances of same age hardly heard of it). Why? In Switzerland is was already abolished earlier (beginning of 20th century) I think, but I don't know exactly. In the rest of the german-speaking countries it was abolished with the Normalschrifterlass (literally normal-font(writing)-decree) in 1941. Both the printed broken letters and the handwritten ones were no longer used. The national-socialists made an obscure connection of it with Jews and therefore it should be abolished, somehow ironic as today blackletter is almost always used in films etc. when referring to the Nazis. In the 1950s and 60s it was again taught, but hardly used and therefore slowly disappeared. 

    My grandmother (born in the 30s) for example can more or less read it, but no longer write it.

    Another interesting fact is, that when I was in primary school (which isn't that long ago), we still called the connected handwriting Lateinische (The Latin), although we never heard of a "The German".  Later in school my math teacher, who was into such things and actually learned it in school (born in the 1950s I guess), sometimes used it jokingly to label vectors in math (like it was done it the past; convenient to have a third set of symbols, beside the Latin and Greek ones) to confuse us. That's were I actually first got interested to it and started to learn to write it (both the German Sütterlin variant and the older one done with a flexible nib). And in my opinion learning to write it is the easiest way to also learn to read it. 

     

    PS:

    It was a widely used practice to write names in the Latin font, like in Your postcard. Some people tended to write only in the Latin font, that's why you said some are easier to read.

    7 hours ago, juju1418 said:

    On the other hand I think I have a postcard with an interesting text there is a photo of flame thrower and it seems to me to read flammenwerfer behind.

    Would be nice if You post it

    Edited by Utgardloki
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    Hi just a few remarks to what Utgardloki wrote:

    1) Sütterlin-Schrift was not introduced to Prussian schools till 1915 and only replaced the former type of writing (old German current) slowly, so all the writing from letters and postcards etc. originating in WW1 are NOT Sütterlin (Utagrdloki didn´t say that, but just to make sure, as 1911 was only the date the Prussian Ministry asked Sütterlin to devise a new script).

    2) After the Normalschrift-Erlaß Antiqua was to replace the Schwalbacher bit by bit, not on the spot. It was also intended first for official govenment and party (NSDAP) use, then for school and then for others. Journals and books printed for distribution in foreign states had priority with the conversion, as it was rightly presumed, that it would be easier for foreigners to read Antiqua. So the complete conversion to Antiqua in all publication took a while.

    3) Names in official documents, especially in civil registry office documents were (to my knowledge) always in Latin current.

    GreyC

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    • 4 weeks later...

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