a lieutenant in a guards regiment?

[joerookery]

This is an unusual tag found inside the silk liner of an officer's helmet that is all correct. The name is the same as a major supplier of pickelhauben. Mike Dwyer says it is not located in the 1914 rank list. As the helmet seems to have some zinc parts it is probably later than 1914. Is there such a person in a later list? I have difficulty believing that the manufacturer would sell a helmet to this specific regiment. Any wisdom of old wise ones????

[Chip]

Joe,

A Lt.der Reserve would not be in the Ranglist would he?

Chip

This is an unusual tag found inside the silk liner of an officer's helmet that is all correct. The name is the same as a major supplier of pickelhauben. Mike Dwyer says it is not located in the 1914 rank list. As the helmet seems to have some zinc parts it is probably later than 1914. Is there such a person in a later list? I have difficulty believing that the manufacturer would sell a helmet to this specific regiment. Any wisdom of old wise ones????

[joerookery]

I don't know Chip. That's what I thought too but Mike said they were in the 1914 list. .

He is not in the Gotha which I believe means he is not noble. The name Wunderlich is the same as a major supplier of pickelhauben. it makes no sense to me that a supplier would have a bin for helmets of lieutenants, as opposed to officers in general. Nor a bin for this specific regiment but who knows? Perhaps he is a very rich non-noble which would explain this regiment.

The regimental history would help.....

[Mike Dwyer]

Joe,

A Lt.der Reserve would not be in the Ranglist would he?

Chip

Chip & Joe,

In the 1914 Rangliste that I have, there is a section that runs from pages 627-816 that lists reserve officers of every Prussian unit. after that there's a section from page 847-1150 that lists Landwehr officers. Whether those are complete listings or not, I don't know.

I have to apologize, I think I had a senior moment. I had said that there were no Wunderlich's in the rangliste, but somehow I missed them. There are quite a few listed, but none for that regiment. There's one major, one hauptmann, one oberleutnant, and seven leutnants. Most of them are Landwehr officers.

Edited July 26, 2009 by Mike Dwyer

[Chip]

Joe and Mike,

Maybe I am thinking of wartime commissioned reserve officers not being listed anywhere. Obviously, not my bailiwick.

Chip

[bob lembke]

Generally you can find (pre-war) reserve officers. As Mike Dwyer stated, in a pre-war Rangliste there will be a section listing the reserve officers still associated with their regiments, and in a later section who by now already have been transferred to a Landwehr Bezirk. Flying on memory, I think that the first section will list the reserve officers by seniority, although it does not give the precise seniority by "date of rank", so you can sort of "reverse engineer" your search to find the (generally) two-year period of active duty for that officer in an earlier Rangliste, say, the 1908 Rangliste. (Thruout this discussion I am assuming that we are talking about the preuss./wuerttem. Ranglisten, which covered most of the German officer corps.) The Rangliste covering his period of active duty will have more info on him, such as his seniority date of rank, the curious little seniority code that went with the DOR from about 1900 on, decorations, etc.

But if a guy was made a reserve officer after August 1914, without having been on active duty in a line regiment before the war, good luck in finding him anywhere. The Ehrenrangliste 1914-1918, published in 1926, covers all the four armies, but does not include reserve officers.

Once you have the exact DOR, you can now also find the officer in the Dienstalterslisten without reading thru 20 pages of lieutenants.

I am flapping my gums here without referring to a couple of shelves of Ranglisten and Dienstalterslisten six feet away over my shoulder. I have had a bunch of them for a few years and only slowly am learning how to use them efficiently. If anyone had a more detailed question I could totter over to them and actually look something up in detail. (Navigating in my office is sometimes a dangerous enterprise.) There are also a bunch of specialized Ranglisten, such as one for Pionier=Offiziere, or of officers from the Prussian Guard. Some of these cover officers from the four pre-war German Armies in one volume.

Some fellow Gentlemen have better collections than I do, and certainly understand them better than I do, but nevertheless I would be happy to do reasonable amounts of look-ups for people, just as I periodically throw myself on the mercy of the senior research gnomes that haunt the corridors of this Forum when I have a more exotic question.

Bob Lembke

[joerookery]

thank you Bob! That was pretty clear to me,

[Chris Boonzaier]

There are also a bunch of specialized Ranglisten, such as one for Pionier=Offiziere, or of officers from the Prussian Guard. Some of these cover officers from the four pre-war German Armies in one volume.

This guy was supposed to be in Garde Grenadier Regt 3...

Maybe in the Prussian Garde liste?

Best

Chris

[bob lembke]

This guy was supposed to be in Garde Grenadier Regt 3...

Maybe in the Prussian Garde liste?

Best

Chris

I am a bit confused by this thread, partially as it is similar to another rather similar thread on another forum. Is "Wunderlich" the name of the Pickelhaube manufacturer, or of the Leutnant der Reserve, or both? I have about 28 Ranglisten that are either Prussian or cover the Prussian Army as well as others. Are we looking for a Leutnant of Garde=Grenadier Regiment Nr. 3 who was of an age so that he could have been a reserve lieutenant in WW I? (I have no Prussian Guard Ranglisten. Unfortunately I once paid a dealer for three of them, but they never arrived. Fortunately a rare occurance.) But of course every Prussian Rangliste did cover the Guard.

Joe, do I have this right? Should I paw thru mine and try to find a "Wunderlich" in that unit?

Bob Lembke

[Mike Dwyer]

I am a bit confused by this thread, partially as it is similar to another rather similar thread on another forum. Is "Wunderlich" the name of the Pickelhaube manufacturer, or of the Leutnant der Reserve, or both? I have about 28 Ranglisten that are either Prussian or cover the Prussian Army as well as others. Are we looking for a Leutnant of Garde=Grenadier Regiment Nr. 3 who was of an age so that he could have been a reserve lieutenant in WW I? (I have no Prussian Guard Ranglisten. Unfortunately I once paid a dealer for three of them, but they never arrived. Fortunately a rare occurance.) But of course every Prussian Rangliste did cover the Guard.

Joe, do I have this right? Should I paw thru mine and try to find a "Wunderlich" in that unit?

Bob Lembke

Bob,

Unless I've been operating under a misunderstanding here, you would be looking for a Leutnant der Reserve Wunderlich in Garde-Grenadier Regiment Nr. 3. I think Joe was just mentioning as an aside that there was also a pickelhaube manufacturer named Wunderlich.

[joerookery]

I think Joe was just mentioning as an aside that there was also a pickelhaube manufacturer named Wunderlich.

Correct! And I cannot think this tag is inventory related.

[bob lembke]

I did some research and wrote a longish reply and the system crashed on me when I tried to post it. DRIVER ERROR when I am confident that this will not happen I will write out my info again. I am sympathetic, I spent a lot of my working life writing and tuning programs.

Bob

[bob lembke]

I wrote out another response posting some findings, and when I tried to post it again the Forum system crashed on me again. Of course I wrote out another fairly long response. I have possibly found our Lt. d. Res. Wunderlich, my candidate was a reserve officer of I=R. Nr. 129, a West Prussian regiment, on May 6, 1914.

Luckily I copied my response before I attempted to post it, so I will try it later.

Bob

[bob lembke]

I will post in little bits until I feel confident of some system stability.

Taking the info above, it would seem that a Leutnant d. Reserve in G.=G.=R. Nr. 3 could have been a former active duty Leutnant in this regiment before the war, and was carried on the reserve rolls of the regiment; was a reserve Leutnant of another regiment, and moved over to this regiment when the war began, or went on; or was a Lt. d. Res. freshly minted after the outbreak of the war. I looked in the index of the 1914 p./w. Rangliste, found the 7 Leutnant Wunderlich's, and went to their individual mentions in the text of the book. One was an infantry lieutenant in another, ordinary regiment (I am running on memory here, due to the system crash, but I think I am correct), who would have remained an active duty lieutenant, and probably with the same regiment; one was a lieutenant in the 1st Heavy Artillery Regiment of the Prussian Guard (a regiment that my grand-father, as a Prussian artillery NCO and then explosives NCO (Oberfeuerwerker) served in in the 1880's), so he would not end up in an infantry regiment. Most of the rest were Leutnant der Landwehr, and once there, you could not go back to Leutnant d. Reserve.

The most likely candidate was Leutnant der Reserve Wunderlich (page 704) carried on the rolls of 3. Westpreussisches Infanterie=Regiment Nr. 129. on

May 6, 1914. He reported to Bezirk III Berlin, which suggests that he lived in Berlin at that time. But his regiment was garrisoned in Graudenz, West Prussia. Let me note that, at this time, only four of the perhaps 60 officers of this regiment were "von"s, a point that will make more sense later.

G.=G.=R. Nr. 3 was garrisoned in Charlottenburg, which I think is a suburb or an urban neighborhood of Berlin. It is entirely possible that after the war started Leut. d. res. Wunderlich engineered a transfer to the Guards regiment stationed in his home town, rather than rejoining his old regiment garrisoned some distance away. More on this later.

Bob