Hungary Hungarian Volksdeutsche!

[hunyadi]

Here is a rather large and interesting photo that I picked up this weekend - it is what appears to me to be a husband wife photo of a Hungarian volunteer to the German army. He has what appears to me to be a M40 (ish?) tunic - a shooting lanyard, rank chevron and OS cap - what is interesting is the WW1 Hungarian commemorative medal that appears to be suspended with a string sewn into the tunic itself. (A common method of attachment for Hungarian tunics.)

[hunyadi]

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Edited February 21, 2007 by hunyadi

[hunyadi]

Also of extreme interest is the addition of a swords device for the combat grade of the WW1 commemorative - a 'little over the top' - but why not - anothr thing to note is the odd type of swords device themselves. I think I recall seeing this type on a German WW1 medal before (?).

[hunyadi]

"Doc" - had found this item a little while ago - an Austrian WW1 commemorative - but I dismissed it as not "textbook" for the nearly perpendicular crossed swords. These are not an exact match to the ones in the photo - but close...

Anyone else seen the short nearly perpendicular crossed swords device?

[decker]

Yes, I was right. I remembered I had seen this kind of crossed swords before. Just check the bar for the Hindenburg cross in the middle. The swords are very similar to the one we can see in Charles' photo. Aren't they?

What if the guy in the picture was not hungarian, but german? I have seen a lot of german awarded medal- and ribbonbars with the Hungarian Commemorative Medal among german medals. He could easily find HC's swords in Germany.

Another fact is, that the HCM was awarded in two forms: with crossed swords (and a helmet) on the medal itself for combatants, and without them for non-combatants. The ribbons were also different, so you didn't have to put a pair of swords on the ribbon to show you got it as a combatant - the ribbon and the medal showed it clearly.

Edited March 28, 2007 by decker

[Guest Rick Research]

Nice to see my Fregattenkapit?n zS aD/Luftwaffe Flak Oberst Thilo von Lattorff's ribbon bar is being enjoyed far far away from where it lives now!

That is certainly a German ribbon bar device on the Hungarian medal, rather than the full sized ones found properly on other awards, but not this medal.

I've got a 1942 award of that Medal to a German SHD senior sergeaant "padding" out his group (he served only in France 1914-18 and must have thought he was pulling a fast one, since his regiment served in the East but he never did), so this might be a very late award like that. But I'd expect to see his Hindenburg Cross if he was a German veteran. You're right that he is probably Volksdeutscher.

Interesting photo!

[hunyadi]

My jump to the Volksdeutcher is that there were a good ammount of Hungarians with German background and I have seen and heard personal testimony where they left Hungary and joined the Wehrmact even after Hungary had enetered the war in the east. Over the last two years at the Military Accademy I have had two students who had grandfathers who were such volunteers. Owing to the fact that after the war anyone with "too much German" in them were sent to Germany - as a result there were several revisions of last names to more 'Hungarian' sounding.

Anyhow - back to the photo - as it lacks a Hindenburg Cross also that a German would have probably treated a 'foreign medal' a little differntly - IE ribbon bar, the owner has clearly sewn a loop on the tunic to hang the medal - and beefed it up with the addtion of swords to let folks know he saw combat in WW1 and the fact that its the Hungarian WW1 Service Medal - not an Austriena one - and I got it here...Magyar in the Whermacht.