Neat But WRONG: Bad Rollkeepers! Bad! BAD!

[Paul C]

The Research Gnome’s lot is not an easy one… when dealing with century old mistakes in primary sources.

There were TWO award rolls for Saxe-Coburg’s Silver Medals with Swords of the triple Ernestine House Order. One was a large tome with each entry spread across two facing pages, kept in Meiningen for all three of the Ernestine Duchies. The other was a single page listing kept in Gotha for the Coburg awards alone.

They do not match.

Here we see awards of that Medal made on 6 June 1916 to members of the IInd Replacement Battalion/ Infantry Regiment 95.

[Paul C]

The above is from the Master Roll. Note Unteroffizier August Schifckerling and Unteroffizier Gebhard Baker.

Yes, Baker.

In transcribing hundreds of thousands of German WW1 award entries, I have NEVER seen the surname Baker. That is NOT something that would be a natural “slip”—of mind or pen.

And here we see the same two fellows on the Coburg list—

[Paul C]

Note the FAR more likely surname Schickerling and…

Corporal BAKER has here been transformed into… BAUER.

Which is actually CORRECT?

(((End Bad Rolls Post 1)))

But the “issues” between the two Rolls go far deeper than a solitary slip up. There are hundreds of cases of names and ranks appearing differently on each Roll. The most bizarre aspect of this is that BOTH the large Master Roll and the tiny Coburg List are entirely, neatly, LEGIBLE.

So…

Why THIS, then?

Master Roll again—awards on 26 May 1916 cropped to Wehrmann ALWIN Marx II of “Reserve Infantry Regiment 12.”

[Paul C]

Ohhhhhh…. Kay.

But like the old “you say tomATEoh, I say tomAHToh… where “Master” has Alwins on the brain…

“Coburg” has ALBINs.

[Paul C]

Same fellow, Line 1710. Clear. Unmistakable. Though… the actual UNIT was Reserve Infantry Regiment 82, not 12.

Clear, sharp. Impossible to mistake.

One could not POSSIBLY mis-read the Coburg List entries, #s 1676 and 1686 for artillerymen Otto Schulze and Albert Adolph.

[Paul C]

So… how did the Master Rollkeeper transform them into infantrymen ???

(((Insert Bad Roll Scan 06)))

IMPOSSSIBLE to mis-read one to the other.

But.

THEY DID.

One of them was wrong, at least once, and possibly twice in a single entry.

And the endless struggle between ALBINs and ALWINs—either of which were just as infrequently common—went on and on throughout the entire war.

I can read the pair of them, no problemo. But they obviously could not read each other’s handwriting. Doh!!!

My thanks to Paul for posting this since I am not online. Rick Research

[Mark C]

Are we assuming the Coburg/Gotha list was transcribed from the Meiningen list? They probably were never co-located so perhaps someone was scribbling from the Meiningen list, carried that copy to Gotha, and then took the time to carefully and neatly transcribe into the official entry book. But the carried list inbetween could very well have not been so carefully done, and led to the errors?

MC

[Paul C]

Rick said they were not together and that is part of the problem.