Up In The Air: Shooting Down Airship Officer Errors In Period Sources !

[Paul C]

Working through the pre-war Ernestine House Order Rolls, I came across this interesting entry:

[Paul C]

Joseph STRICKER, Gerichtsassessor and Leutnant der Reserve in Luftschiffer Bataillon 2 Berlin was awarded the EH3b (aka HSH3b in Army Rank Lists) from Altenburg on 10 November 1913. The little check mark left of his name indicates that he returned the receipt which accompanied all Orders, stating that he had received it and would see to it that it was returned after his death. Which, from the comments column notation “† 1915” occurred in that year. The large check mark over his name shows that the Order was indeed returned.

Problem is, there was no Lt dR “Stricker.” ERROR !!!! The 1914 Prussia/Württemberg Rank List reveals that his name was actually STICKER—

[Paul C]

and shows that he also held the Schaumburg-Lippe Honor Cross 4th Class (“SLH4”) and Danish Dannebrog Order-Knight (“DD3”)—quite impressive for a junior legal official and a mere Leutnant dR!!! (His commission date was 27.01.06 G11g, serving with Inf Rgt 97 to 1910/11.)

Wartime reservists being “invisible” unless they turn up on an award roll that our Research Collective has been working on, or if they were Prussian officer fatalities, I checked the 1939 Ehrenmal to see if he was among the war dead. Not… according to that.

OK, next a flip through the massive wartime Militär-Wochenblätter in case some trace of him appeared there.

Sure enough, column 2652 in the edition of 22 June 1915 shows him as promoted to Oberleutnant dR on 18 June 1915 and—attached to naval airships!

[Paul C]

Since army officers attached to the navy—including otherwise “invisible” reservists—appear as nominal entries in the Naval Honor Rank List, checking there finds that he was, indeed, a fatality!

[Paul C]

He was killed in action aboard airship “L 10.” The army Ehrenmal simply… missed him! ERROR !!!

OK, next step:

I have already transcribed the Rolls for both Schaumburg-Lippe’s and Lippe-Detmold’s House Orders and… Herr Sticker did NOT repeat NOT receive the “SLH4” !!! ERROR !!!!

He DID, however, receive the –Detmold “LDH4b” !!! Errors upon errors in period sources!!!! AAARGHHH !!!!!

(Sticker Scan 05)

The WONDERFUL 1905+ -Detmold Rolls reveal that he was a Gerichtsassessor aD in Berlin, born at Cöln am Rhein 28 April 1881 when he received the 75th Order of that class on 19 October 1913. (Late 1913 must have been a busy time for him!) Here again, note under the Roll’s remarks that the Lippe-DETMOLD award was returned on 29 September 1915 because Sticker was “gefallen im Kriege.”

(The statistics on returns of –Detmold awards—the most thoroughly complete reckoning found on any Rolls we have worked on to date—are truly h-o-r-r-i-f-y-i-n-g from a collector’s point of view, and will cause much weeping and lamentations when these Rolls are published.)

So:

One award roll (and award Urkunde too, one wonders?) spelled his name wrong…

The official Army Rank List entered the wrong abbreviation for his Lippe award…

The semi-official Prussian Register of Officer War Dead skipped him…

But at least the Lippe-Detmold Roll and the Navy Honor Rank List got him correctly.

Once again, this shows the extent to which we few weary researchers must go to verify even presumably-“correct” period sources, as well as the need to accumulate as MANY sources as humanly (or inhumanly) possible in order to CATCH such errors. As the Fifth Element of Imperial German officer research, the scary thing is that I was the only person breathing to have ALL these particular sources at hand. That is what makes our Research Collective

and SHARING DATA

so desperately important.

Sources:

Combined Master Roll for the Ernestine Duchies’ House Order (which I only have from 1911 onward)

Lippe-Detmold Roll for the Honor Cross 1869-1918

[jaba1914]

Nothing realy new but here the Info i have.

Olt.d.R. Josef Sticker

Born: 28.04.1881 at Köln

+: 03.09.1915 near Neuwerk

26.03.1915 - 30.03.1915 Kommandiert nach Tondern für 5 Tage

21.06.1915 Befördert zum Olt.d.R.d.Luftschiffer

03.09.1915 gefallen als Wachoffizier auf L 10

Regards Alex