DAMM Ribbon Bar !

[Guest Rick Research]

What IS it this week with members of the Reichs Finance Ministry?

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=22165

The name is Damm, Richard Damm:

This is an 8-out-of-9 match, and given the sloppiness of the Intendantur Ehren Rangliste 1914-1918, I'll run with that as a 99.9% match--

Born 1878, entered military service 1897 (see next post). The IERL shows him at Marine Intendantur, Wilhelmshaven until December 1917 and then at the Reichsmarine Amt in Berlin, confirming

"combatant" EK2 and Oldenburg FAK, with Hamburg Hanseatic Cross, Bavarian Ludwig Cross, Bavarian Luitpold Jubilee Medal (see below) and Bavarian Reserve-Landwehr XX Years Cross. Entry has a typo "BDL1" (sic) instead of "BLD1" and NONE of the Beamten in this section show the "Prussian" XXV Years Service Crosses that they became eligible for as naval officials under regulations of June 1914 (suspended for the duration).

So right here, everything but the Bremen Hanseatic matchs, and we have only to establish that he was alive after 1929's IERL entry to have gotten a very much non-combatant Hindenburg Cross.

Why he did not get the NONcombatant ribbons for his EK2 and OK2 is beyond me-- he was a bean counter, after all.

That's two for two identified after MONTHS of sleepless nights in a treasure trove of puzzles, enigmas, and maddeningly nameless bars from David S.

[Guest Rick Research]

You are saying, what are those BAVARIAN ARMY awards doing in a NAVAL group?

Well, there are several fellow Bavarians on the same page with Damm, above. By being a nominal reserve officer (in his case, Landwehr)-- he got to wear a sword with a portepee and so had JUST that teensy "social edge" over military officials who were NOT reserve officers. He thus accumulated Bavarian army reservist part-time... while full-time in the navy!

here he was in the 1914 Bavarian Milit?r Handbuch (Paul C's CD version) with his 1905 Luitpold Jubilee Medal and then-BLD2--

and here he is in the 1914 NAVY Rank List (Paul C's CD again), where Luitpolds were not shown:

Note his fellow Bavarian army colleagues.

Unfortunately, Beamten had their own "segregated" rank Lists for their position dates and so on, so this is all that senior officials showed in the normal Lists.

Always remember that reserve officers had DAY JOBS...

sometimes wearing another uniform.

[Guest Rick Research]

Even the 1914-1918 Naval Honor Rank List (Paul's CD version sure saves wear and tear on the originals!) gave Beamten short shrift... but here he is showing a final promotion in 1918 unmentioned by the IERL, and showing that his first "established position" dated from the month shown in 1906-- as a Marine Intendantur Assessor in Wilhelmshaven, as the 1908 MRL reveals (no scan-- no promotion date or award to show ):

So, all we need to verify now is whether Ministerial Rat (about the same as a civil service Oberst) Damm was alive and still counting beans at the Reichs FinanceMinistry when Hindenburg Crosses were being handed out.

The Reichs Finance Ministry was in Berlin, of course. And the Berlin city directories are online.

[Guest Rick Research]

I know, I know. the suspense is killing you.

1935 Berlin City Directory=

[Guest Rick Research]

And just to make double sure that wasn't from January 1935 and maybe his paperwork wasn't processed and he suddenly dropped dead or something

1936 Berlin City Directory =

8 out of 9 ribbons verified/verifiable.

MAYBE his Bremen will show up in the 1917 Beamten Rangliste. UNFORTUNATELY, morons in the U.S. Customs Service emptied a box with the xeroxed Bremen rolls and the U.S. Postal Service obligingly delivered on the empty box so Bremen's roll cannot be checked on THIS side of the ocean.

1936 was the last year Damm is shown in the Berlin city directories. Died? Retired? No 1938 Treudienst 40 Years Service Cross, then, to add to his Bavarian XX and "Prussian" XXV.

I hope you have enjoyed my Damm ribbon bar. A lot of them with more interesting and seemingly "easy" awards remain frustratingly unidentified, but at least this is one anonymous Damm ribbon bar re-named.

[saschaw]

Great work, really great work, buuuuut: it's not only a DAMM but as well a DAMN bar. You want to know why? Hmmm ... you may guess whose it was in 2004. Guess just once, Rick ...

But little Sascha, back then aged 16, always needed money ...

World is small, isn't it?!

Edited October 13, 2007 by saschaw

[David S]

Now if we can only follow the chain of custody back to the DAMM owner it would be spectacular !!

I NEVER had any pretense of an idea of that bar being identified . . . but Ricky (the Ribbon Bar Master) did it

[Guest Rick Research]

Hmmm, 4 owners in 3 years...

and we're all HERE!

Let this be a Lesson To You All

just send ALL your ribbon bars to me, right now,

and eventually,

one of these years

if the original guy was NOT a

world famous Reichsgeneraloberfeldmarschallf?hrer

I will find him.

[Richard Gordon]

Rick

I often wonder how many hours are required to identify such a bar... Did you spend 2 months getting to the root of this one?

Rich