Sachsen-Meiningen Unpublished Award Rolls 1914-1918

[Guest Rick Research]

Yes folks, on to Unpublished State Number 5! I shall be starting with the Kriegsehrenkreuz, because that roll is COMPLETE

[Guest Rick Research]

Besides, as the scan above shows, they were pretttttttttttty.

As with almost all the German wartime rolls, even with full names and dates, FINDING them is NOT a matter of chronology alone, as this example will show.

Here, scanned as one piece despite it's bigger than scanner size, using my Amazing Ricky Powers Of Non-Technological Substitution, is the award document for a KEK on 22 April 1915 to Oberleutnant dR Fritz Koch, of I. Bn/ Inf Rgt 32, Assessor aD living in Meiningen:

That is from Paul C's collection. Notice the cryptic File Numbers at bottom right: 32/381 etc. Note also the quite unexpected HEADING as presented by Charlotte as Regent in Bernhard's absence. That makes for an interesting variety in the documents that should be noted when possible to, since apparently any time HE happened to be away from home, the actual paperwork was literally given under HER name-- which is strange.

[Guest Rick Research]

Now you'd THINK that being a 22 April 1915 award, it would be between 21 April and 23 April. But it is not. It and its fellows follow in a batch at the end of JUNE, which is why an actual page number refernce will still need to be listed to find any specific entry.

Mercifully for READERS, those will not need to be included in the PUBLISHED version ofthe roll. But I will keep those notations for friendly scanning of actual pages and so on as the occasions arise.

Here indeed is Oberlt dR Koch, top of page 66-- and the 898th ENTRY in the Roll. (So award document file numbers remain "mysterious")

Note the various as-yet equally mysterious Roll Keeper marks and jottings. Some of those can be quite enlightening-- as with this page. Note the Great Big Check Mark, which has notation "See last Honor Cross on this page." Why? Because the weirdly named officer was entered with his last name first, and is struck off in the checked entry and RE-entered correctly at the bottom of the page! That's part of what makes the Rolls interesting-- it is a learning process getting inside the minds of the original scribes as these are transcribed and cross-checked.

Should be done with the "SMK" by the end of January 2007, at which time All Will Be Known.

[Dave Danner]

So perhaps there is a chance of finally narrowing down who our Bavarian friend might be?

[Paul C]

Rick, You have wonderfull eye! No I don't mean it that way. How can you read that writting. Thanks for finding it and posting it.

[webr55]

Maybe this one as well, with the Lippe rolls:

Great work, Rick!

[WNickel]

Hi Dave,

your bar can belong to Siegfried Popper, Bay 9. FAR,

Bayern MVO 4. class with x, 24.06.1915 as L dR

Sachsen-Meiningen Kriegsverdienstkreuz, 29.03.1916, OL dR

?sterreich MVK 3. class Kriegsdekoration, 12.05.1917 OL dR

In the last months 1917 and in 1918 there were no foreign decorations to bavarian officiers published.

Happy new year

Werner

[Guest Rick Research]

There aren't any rolls for the -Detmold KVK or KVM.

I will pass 10% of the Meiningen KVK roll pages today (that sounds better than 33 of 330!!!) and there are a number of VERY interesting things just so far:

1) completely opposite to most of the other German states' war merit/noncombat awards, the "non combatant ribbon" version SMK is already over 20% of the total number awarded and I am still working through APRIL 1915-- the second month they were awarded. Obviously the "combatant ribbon" numbers are where I am on the pages and cannot be so statistically skewed overall.

2) Quite a number of the "noncombatant ribbon" awards are ALSO already noted as being REPLACED later by "combatant ribbon" awards. Which DECREASES the number of ACTUAL non-combatant ribboned awards out there. Making any found on medal bars even MORE special.

3) Also contrary to the usual award devaluation--with most awarded in the last year or two years of the war, the exact OPPOSITE is true with the SMKs. Flipping ahead, I would say that easily 50% of them were awarded in 1915, and the majority by 1916. It is as if having awarded all of them to anybody they could, there weren't many "new" recipients left to get any by war's end. And yes, the roll is complete, aside from page 9 which is missing-- there are 14 names on every page. Which means that although the lovely deep chocolate bronze ones are"valued" (money) higher, the ugly icky zinkies are actually quite quite rare. Be so advised. (All part of the service, friends. )

4) the "mystery" of why SOME Feldwebelleutnant types (remember Jeff's portrait photo?) got an SMK is revealed. It was not their MILITARY status that counted-- but their CIVILIAN pay grade. I've already encountered one revoked (sniff) because he was an hourly wage earner and not a salary-man.

5) compounding the mix, apparently Meiningen which gaveth also tooketh away. Found a notation that an SMK was returned when the recipient got an Ernestine Ritter 2X. Which if that turns out to have been the rule and not an exception will mean that if we look at a medal bar with an Ernestine Knight X and an SMK-- we will know that the Order was from -Altenburg or -Coburg and can check those rolls rather than -Meiningen's.

Lots of interesting detail on reserve officers' civilian jobs, though the usual Dreaded "Prussian" Pattern applies, of omitting far too many first names which always makes trying to sort these officers out after "finishing" a roll QUITE a chore.

[Dave Danner]

Hi Dave,

your bar can belong to Siegfried Popper, Bay 9. FAR,

Bayern MVO 4. class with x, 24.06.1915 as L dR

Sachsen-Meiningen Kriegsverdienstkreuz, 29.03.1916, OL dR

?sterreich MVK 3. class Kriegsdekoration, 12.05.1917 OL dR

In the last months 1917 and in 1918 there were no foreign decorations to bavarian officiers published.

Happy new year

Werner

Possibly, Werner. The only problem is the ribbon bar, which indicates that even though he is a Bavarian, the Sachsen-Meiningen award came before the Bavarian award.

[Guest Rick Research]

Today I completed transcription through page 111 of the 333, so 1/3 "done."

Whatever earlier limitations there were on Feldwebelleutnants had apparently been dropped completely by where I am-- barely into September 1915. One lone Offizierstellvertreter has turned up-- but he was a pilot and in the "reasons and excuses" (and there are a number of the latter, oh me oh my) he had "already recipient of the EK1 and EK2" to noodge the Scrooges at the Orders Chancery into approval. (It worked). F?hnriche also routinely showing up getting the SMK.

What is still seemingly random and cannot ever be sorted out is why some noncombatant ribbon awards were made to the same category of recipient who got combatant ribboned ones. The only distinction that seems reasonable for why the same rank in the same Replacement Battalion of the same regiment got one ribbon as opposed to the other must have been that the "combatant" ribbon recipients in that kind of Rear Area job were there temporarily while recuperating from wounds or the like and were actually being decorated for earlier frontline service. Whenever there ARE "formerly...now" notations, those will appear in the printed version.

Along with "grandson of Financial Councillor Z" type entries.

A surprising number of what would otherwise be "oddball" awards were made explicitly because the chosen recipient had been BORN in Sachsen-Meiningen, or had previously served there. In that regard, Meiningen was FAR more generous with "former attachments" than any other roll I've seen. Likewise the noncombatant ribbon awards for some truly dull and insignificant "home service" awards--the sort that got the bulk of Prussian military "white-black" EK 2s AFTER the war-- is far more generous than any other award I have encountered. But quite a few of those were replaced later by combatant ribbon awards. So the number of non-combatant ribboned SMKs that were BESTOWED will be a good number less than were able to be WORN, deducting those at the end.

And the more I see of how generously these were given out, the more I wonder at the "missing" 1916-18 Ernestine rolls from Meiningen. I wonder if they simply stopped handing those out, in favor of the much cheaper SMKs and SMMs?

Entire regiments of Saxons have already got 'em by where I am. There are a mere handful of Bavarians and less than a handful each of awards to naval and W?rttemberg recipients.

[Rick]

One lone Offizierstellvertreter has turned up-- but he was a pilot and ...

And he was Offz.Stv. Willy Eckardt? Correct? R.

[Guest Rick Research]

Yup-- Feldflieger Abteilung 42 of AOK von Falkenhausen. His SMK was approved 26 May 1915, making that EK1 not only astonishing for being that early-- but also for him apparently surviving the next 3+ years of war!

[Ulsterman]

" Don't suppose you find a Lt. col Haasmann of IR 181 in that roll do you? His doc. 32,759I is on auction at ebay (Oct. 20, 1915)

Edited January 6, 2007 by Ulsterman

[Guest Rick Research]

Yes, page 135 but that's Saxon IR 133 not IR 181.

It's not as easy as having a date, since they skip back and forth. I'll be half way done tomorrow and have just crossed into 1916-- whereupon pages dating back as far as May and July 1915 appear for belated entering.

Nobody else will care what page the award is actually entered on, only the dates, but I'm keeping my working version so I can go back in and FIND specific entries.

[saschaw]

I have one bar with SMK (better: a bar where one should be, bar is ripped off ) and some pictures(!) of veeery nice bars that have been on Ebay in the last years. I'm not sure if I may post them and if anyone likes the see them at all?

I also have two Meiningen documents, but both just for the Women's and Virgin's cross, not for the SMK ...

These are no eventually topic, hmm?

Or would this all only disturb the thread which is actually about the rolls?

Edited January 6, 2007 by saschaw

[Guest Rick Research]

Oh for those please start a new thread. That would be very nice! I have never seen those before!

I do not THINK I have the rolls for the Meiningen women's awards, but they may be tucked into the HUGE pile of what I have, or is still to be picked up. Things were all scrambled from the three gurus working on things and what has survived are random parts and not the whole that any of them had. Good thing these were bound in giant covers like the Domesday Book!!!!

The only state which I most definitely DO have the ladies' award rolls for is Lippe-Detmold and I will indeed get to those this year.

[Guest Rick Research]

The Meiningen women's awards were in the same volume as the SMK but apparently Neal didn't request them, so I don't have those pages. I have all of Lippe-Detmold's and the Saxon Maria Order rolls for award rolls to women.

Passed the 2/3 point today with the SMK. Alas and woe, ashes, and MUCHO squinting, the geriatric clerk (quite freakish personal handwriting-- our style "h" rather than the Sutterlin but written distinctly as "ln" instead of "h," no 1st leg on capital "M"s, uncrossed "t"s, and absofreakinlootely no difference between an "r" and an "i" except the missing dot

not much of a clue since effective with 1917 Kriegstinte apparently came in, and aside from the suddenly microscopic writing so tiny it all bled together without distinct letters, there are gaps sometimes of several letters that just aren't often there.

Where's Quincy when I need him?

so the first 200 pages were actually a joy to work on, but the last 130 are going to be a

beach. (Scan above is LARGER than original size )

Roughly at April 1917 (though have spotted entries from 1915 and 1916 in 1918 still to come).

Also confirmation of bad news that Meiningen's 1917-18 Ernestine rolls ARE missing came in a reference I've seen on a 1918 SMK referring to a Volume IX, Page 100. The rolls end with Volume VIII.

[Guest Rick Research]

Today here's another a noncombatant SMK to--- a woman!

Yup. Miss Anna Prehn, Secretary of the National Foundation for the Next of Kin of the War Dead in Berlin Charlottenburg got HER unique (so far anyway) award as the 452nd noncombatant SMK of the war on 17 May 1917.

She did NOT get what I would have expected-- the Merit Cross for Women and Young Ladies in War-care.

Notice that TINY little checkmark left of her entry? That's the "receipt returned" mark-- confirming THIS award was not a mistake.

It's just WEIRD.

A Brazilian "Grosskaufmann" was bestowed one about the same time-- making me wonder how he GOT it... in Rio de Janeiro.

I love award rolls.

[Gerd Becker]

I love award rolls

Even if you would try, you couldn?t hide that

Great work, Rick Nice dicoveries lately

[saschaw]

Today here's another a noncombatant SMK to--- a woman!

I've got something better, on one of the two Meiningen bars I missed yet to post:

On the 8 place medal bar of Wilhelm Emil Richter, 1852-1936 (which was recently sold on Ebay.de for ca. 600,- Euro), there was the Merit Order for Women and Young Ladies in War-care.

No comments from me.

PS:

My apologize for the tiny crappy picture, but better than nothing ...

[saschaw]

And secondly, a 10 place frack bar to a doctor or something similar - and again only a very crappy ebay photo ...

Here, the SMK on noncombattant ribbon again:

Edit:

Holy St. whatever, this is the worst photo I've ever seen ...

Edited January 13, 2007 by saschaw

[Guest Rick Research]

Today I crossed 3,000 combatant ribbons done and 500 noncombatants.

I have found ONE more Offizier-Stellvertreter-- an infantry one this time.

254 pages done, 79 to go. Am at about October 1917 but every month I get forward, they keep retroactively entering clumps of awards from months earlier. I know looking ahead into 1918 there are some there from 1916!

[Rick]

Today I crossed 3,000 combatant ribbons done and 500 noncombatants.

I have found ONE more Offizier-Stellvertreter-- an infantry one this time.

254 pages done, 79 to go. Am at about October 1917 but every month I get forward, they keep retroactively entering clumps of awards from months earlier. I know looking ahead into 1918 there are some there from 1916!

Keep plugging away, it'll be soon be finished (then on to the NEXT one) R.

[Guest Rick Research]

40 Flieger and 12 Luftschiffer ... so far.

[Rick]

40 Flieger and 12 Luftschiffer ... so far.

Cool! I eagerly await it!

Edited January 16, 2007 by Rick