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    Little "Big" merit crosses & medals


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    Dear imperialoids,

    There are quite a few medals or small merit crosses given to NCO or soldiers, which are not desirable or less know to the big public, but very rare indeed for numbers of bestowal. Many of them have a very delicate and well thought design.

    I am posting the first for you a medal of a little German State. This Duchy disappeared from the German map when it was taken by the Kingdom of Prussia after the Campaign of 1866.

    This medal was given to all in 1909 still living NCOs and soldiers (3'228 times awarded). The silver medal is much rarer and it was given only to officers (less than 30!).

    Enjoy and don't hesitate to post your little "BIG" medal...

    Ciao,

    Claudio

    Edited by Claudio
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    I am posting the first for you a medal of a little German State. This Duchy disappeared from the German map when it was taken by the Kingdom of Prussia after the Campaign of 1866.

    This medal was given to all in 1909 still living NCOs and soldiers (3'228 times awarded). The silver medal is much rarer and it was given only to officers (less than 30!).

    I have what may be an example of that decoration on a ribbon bar:

    IPB Image

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    I'm betting on Nassau & hoping to win a prize!

    The medal would suffice...

    If not - thanks for posting regardless, Claudio.

    Thanks, Claudio, this should develop into a very interesting thread. I'm curious what was the small state that was absorbed by Prussia after 1866?

    Now I have to go root around in my stuff to see if I have anything that meets your unique requirements.

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    Gentlemen,

    For this thread, I would like to present a silver merit cross to the Hannoverian Ernst August Order. I suppose that you could consider it to be rare in that there were fifty awards of this decoration - far fewer than the higher knight?s crosses

    The main reason that I chose this piece, though, is that Claudio?s post #2, the Lippe-Detmold merit cross, offers us an excellent opportunity to compare the two. It has long been speculated that they are identical except for the center medallions. Since both were, as I understand it, made by Carl B?sch, this is a very likely possibility.

    Best wishes,

    Wild Card

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    I had always felt that the bar/mount itself was probably real. But probably missing the Military=Ehrenzeichen 2. Klasse. Now that's not a problem in and of itself to fix... but the MEZ1 looked very real, but I could not get bigger/clearer photos to really see what was what and ending up having to pass for safety's sake. If the MEZ1 was real, I would have ended up with a nice bar to fix and an exceedingly rare loose piece.... sigh....

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