Kolonial Badge (Elephant Order)

[army historian]

Does anyone know if the crusiers in the Atlantic in 1914 S.M.S. Dresden and S.M.S. Karlsruhe were eligiable for the Kolonial Badge? Any help would be appreciated.

Captain George Albert

Edited December 14, 2009 by army historian

[Histaria]

Does anyone know if the crusiers in the Atlantic in 1914 S.M.S. Dresden and S.M.S. Karlsruhe were eligiable for the Kolonial Badge? Any help would be appreciated.

Captain George Albert

The only ship mention I've seen in any literature was for the Austro-Hungarian cruiser S.M.S. Kaiserin Elisabeth. However, that was in the context of extending the award to foreign recipients in 1928. Hope that helps a tiny bit.

Edited January 5, 2010 by Histaria

[Guest Rick Research]

Apparently not, since they had not sailed from China.

Given the wildly-Africa-specific and (frankly) UGLY LITTLE design, it seems bizarre that troops in China (and even weirder, the South Pacific where there were not even pachyderms in zoos ) all qualified as having been in the colonies during the war.

Case in point was then-Korvettenkapitän Adalbert Zuckschwerdt, who got his as captain of the Auxiliary Cruiser "Cormoran"-- which spent the war interned in American Samoa. He ended up as a geriatric coast artillery Admiral during the Second War and can be seen wearing the badge in his portrait in the admirals' biographies series.

The Colonial Badge was shown in inter-war Reichsmarine Rank Lists but remember that this award not only had to be applied for, the recipient actually had to BUY them from the designer/manufacturer. There would probably have been a number of people who weren't interested in shelling out cash for an elephant trotting by a palm tree when that bore NO relationship to THEIR war.

I have WW2 ribbon bars from then-Viozeadmiral Joachim Lietzmann, who survived the sinking of the "Gneisenau" and while he is shown with this badge in the 1920s navy Lists, I have never seen him WEARING it.

Edited January 5, 2010 by Rick Research