Die silberne Verdienstmeadaille

[ccj]

Lippe silberne Verdienstmeadaille

Can anyone show me one of these medals and tell me what constitiuted the awarding?

Edited June 14, 2007 by ccj

[Naxos]

What it looks like depends on the State (W?rttemberg, Hessen, Sachsen ....)

It means "silver merit medal" I think it is the State equivalent to the Iron Cross

Hardy

this is the Baden one:

Edited June 14, 2007 by Naxos

[Naxos]

Award Document:

[Dave Danner]

Schaumburg-Lippe's silver Verdienstmedaille existed from 1869 to 1918 in various forms. Here is an example on Uwe Bretzendorfer's site:

http://www.bretzendorfer.com/obilder/05824vs.jpg

http://www.bretzendorfer.com/obilder/05824rs.jpg

Lippe-Detmold also had various silver Verdienstmedaillen. There might be an image of examples in the Lippe thread: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=12427

These were the basic civil merit awards of the two principalities.

[Guest Rick Research]

Charles-- you mean the Lippe DETMOLD Silver Merit Medal, or the SCHAUMBURG Lippe Silver Merit Medal? Two different designs, so it depends on precisely which one you want to know about.

Having completed Lippe-Detmold's award rolls, which are almost unique for giving DETAILED information about the recipients--

their version Silver Merit Medal was a general purpose award that could be and was awarded to anyone from the status of an ordinary army Private to a senior NCO, including civil serrvants and court "lackeys' (apparently that term was not considered insulting in German). It was generally an initial award, with many recipients subsequently getting the medal in Gold, or a Merit Cross of the house order Honor Cross.

Things get a bit confusing, because once the Leopold Order's Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals were created, those frequently got mixed in, with either the same grades or one or the other higher were awarded seemingly at random along the lines of "you've already GOT this one, so now we'll give you THAT one."

Military personnel and "outlanders" tended to only get one. A lot of the awards were made to railway station managers (clean rest rooms?), especially attentive foreign court servants on the endless visits royals made to each other, and so on.

But local civil servants with a lifetime on duty got a steady and what seems to be remarkably generous progression of awards.

Unfortunately for Lippe Detmold collectors, a horrifying number of these awards were RETURNED after their recipients died, and so numbers AWARDED are in no way

no way at ALL

related to the vastly decreased numbers that are THEORETICALLY "available" Out There.

I hope to have the Lippe Detmold rolls published by the end of this year. But each new roll done inevitably leads into improving and expanding upon what is Completed and so the "finished" Lippe DETMNOLD rolls are still having additions made from the final back-filling of data I am doing on the "completed" SCHAUMBURG Honor Cross rolls 1890-1918.

Daniel and I have decided to cross-list all known awards from BOTH Lippes in the two Rolls.

[Solomon]

Here is a picture of the silver merit medal Lippe-Detmold.

The ribbon is an original one.

[Solomon]

...and...to make it complete:

Awarding document for the silver merit medal

(This one is very rare, because Leopold IV. of Lippe-Detmold signed it himself...quite uncommon).

Best regards

Solomon

[ccj]

Thanks Rick... I still have confusion about the two Lippes

Solomon, that's a lovely medal.

[Naxos]

Hello Charles,

sorry for my post, thought your question was general (must have missed the Lippe part)

Regards, Hardy