Order of the Zahringen Lion question

[Signalcorps45]

Hello to everyone,

I picked up this medal bar this weekend.  I was wondering how many Zahringen Lion Knight 2nd class with swords and oakleave were issued?

Dean

 

[Dave Danner]

The exact number is unknown, though we have a fairly good estimate. For World War I, Volle has 1504 and Roth has 1479 awards.

Roth's list was missing a few late war awards which were not gazetted in the Staatsanzeiger. Since I have the actual roll and not just the Staatsanzeiger, I have added 50 more late-war awards not in Roth, which would be 1529 in total. However, I cannot be certain if Roth's 1479 was correct (some awards might have been mis-listed), so maybe the actual number is somewhere between Volle's 1504 and Roth/Danner's 1529.

Very nice medal bar, by the way.

[Trooper_D]

3 hours ago, Dave Danner said:

The exact number is unknown, though we have a fairly good estimate. For World War I, Volle has 1504 and Roth has 1479 awards.

Roth's list was missing a few late war awards which were not gazetted in the Staatsanzeiger. Since I have the actual roll and not just the Staatsanzeiger, I have added 50 more late-war awards not in Roth, which would be 1529 in total. However, I cannot be certain if Roth's 1479 was correct (some awards might have been mis-listed), so maybe the actual number is somewhere between Volle's 1504 and Roth/Danner's 1529.

Dear Dave

Would you be kind enough to clarify something for me? You have the roll of the Order but you also state that the exact number of awards is unknown. Does this indicate that some genuine awards never made it onto the roll (because of war-time conditions, perhaps?). If not on the roll, how do we judge an award to be 'genuine'?

A couple of subsidiary questions, if I may: who maintained the roll and when was the last entry?

[Dave Danner]

The roll is for all awards of the Order, as well as the Order of Berthold I and House Order of Loyalty, including swords and non-swords awards. I have copies of pages 224 to 550, running from 30 October 1913 to the end of the war and the Grand Duchy in November 1918.  It is not organized by class; rather, all classes are in chronological order. 

There are lines for 30 entries per page, so that means some 9800 awards of all classes on these pages.  World War I awards with swords begin on page 240.  I suppose I could simply start counting from there, but it is simply a slow, time-consuming process for little reward. I considered doing an update to Roth's book, but I do not think there is enough interest to justify the publishing costs *. Rick and Daniel barely broke even on the previous series of books. Right now, my priorities are Schwarzburg, which is completed and awaiting formatting/publication, Anhalt, which is mostly done, and Schaumburg-Lippe, which is also mostly done.

There is also another problem with the roll, which might partly explain the difference between Volle's and Roth's numbers, and also while starting in August 1914 and counting awards won't work.

Note the following entry for Hermann Clemm. As a Fabrikant in Gernsbach, he received the BZ3bE on 2.7.1914.  As a Rittmeister d.L., he received the BZ3bXE on 16.8.1915. The clerk who maintained the roll entered the swords award here on the same page as the earlier non-swords award, rather than under the other 16.8.1915 awards. 

This happened in a number of cases, though apparently not most of them, where a holder of a peacetime class received a wartime class.  This also happened in a number of cases where someone simply received a higher class or classes over the course of his life.  So if you are looking for a specific award such as Clemm's BZ3bXE and you know the date of award, you will find that it is not on the page(s) with awards from that date. And that also means you'd have to go back through many of the earlier pages to find all of the other wartime awards listed with the recipient's peacetime award(s). 

When it was gazetted in the Staatsanzeiger, Clemm's swords award was included with other awards made on the same day, so it was included in Roth's book with the right date. I suspect Roth's 1479 number was correct as far as it went, getting all of the awards officially published and missing only the late war awards, bringing the total to 1529, while Volle's higher 1504 number might be because he supplemented his number with information from other sources. Several of the "missing" late-war recipients were later Reichswehr and Wehrmacht officers, for example, so their awards showed up in later sources or photos.  But as I noted above, I cannot say for certain without going through the entire roll all the way back to the 1800s. 

* PS: I do think there is some value in updating Roth's book. For wartime security reasons, the actual unit was often not listed in the Staatsanzeiger, so Roth's book has numerous entries such as "Leutnant d.R. (Fliegerabteilung)". The actual roll, however, includes the full unit designation. Also, as with my other works, I seek to include additional information where available such as dates of birth/death and civilian occupations. I have been trying to make these books more than just lists of awards and names, but to the extent possible memorials to the men who earned them.

PPS: I did compile the list of those "missing" 1918 awards. It was supposed to be published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ordenskunde as a supplement to the Roth book - I believe as a PDF or maybe in their magazine? - but I am not sure of the status.

 

[Signalcorps45]

Dave,

Thank you for taking the time to post all this information.

Dean

 

[Trooper_D]

38 minutes ago, Signalcorps45 said:

Dave,

Thank you for taking the time to post all this information.

Dean

Dave

As Dean said - and thank you also for giving your insights into the complexity of interpreting these rolls