Allgemeine-SS Sonderanfertigung Visor

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is a Verwaltungsamt SS issue stamp from 1936. The sweatband is marked for the same year.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is the Probe example of the Muller Sonderanfertigung cap for sale by Maederer. It is likely from 1937 or so. I date this first black tag to this year, but I am not 100% certain.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I would not expect a Sonderanfertigung cap to bear any VA 193X stamp, as such caps were private purchase.

Happy hats. I hope the additional data makes some sense.

It is preferable, I think, to looking at the 500th image of a fake SS cap badge.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is an early white SS RZM tag and the date of the sweat band manufacture of note...Adolf Ernst, Hannover/Nord or East...but Hannover all the same...

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This piece is now on the Wolfe/Gottlieb/Maederer/Weitze site. Here the contractor Ernst aided the lives of those in the 21st century with an actual date. When one considers all else that happened in 1935 as concerns the fate of the world, how can two sane people concern themselves with such picayune details? My guest family in Bonn/Duisdorf always thought I was nuts.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The owner of the above piece inscribed his SS number here, so one should be able to figure out this man's identity. You will also notice that both of these Ernst made caps were retailed by the RZM, though the stamp is very faint in one of the examples at hand.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

In fact, the first cap here with the early features and the Probe example were all retailed from the RZM. Small wonder, when you consider that the Mueller firm and this office of the Party were more or less collocated in Munich, die Hauptstadt der Bewegung. I also think that the SS and or the RZM also gave contracts to no. German firms, too, i.e. Wagner and Ernst here to compensate for a preponderance of SS caps made early on in Bavaria. The Historisches Lexikon Bayern website is all very good on this score of the political geography of the early movement, as is the new biography of Himmler by Longerich, that is, to emphasize the Bavarians origins of the SS in the person of Heini H., to say nothing of AH, the uprooted Upper Austrian. Longerich wrote an excellent history of the SA and has now offered us the first solid biography of Heini H.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

But more startling is the grey cap with the Sonderanfertigung interior, something seen very seldom, indeed. I actually think this man was in the SSTV, in fact. These images did I retain from the daggers site of yore.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

and more astonishing yet still is this field cap in black. This is from the "Paul S." collection known to some of you. At least he posted the image, and maybe someone else owns it. A very impressive piece. Colleague d'Alquen has an early piece of this type, but of simpler make. This is truly a remarkable piece in a very fine state of preservation. This image appeared recently elsewhere, but it deserves some pride of place here, too.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Since Mr. Stonemint asked about dates, I propose my evidence of same for the critical examination of my wise colleagues.

Here is what I think is the first pattern of RZM tag, i.e. a kind used in all headwear of the Gliederungen of the NSDAP in the wake of the introduction of the requirement to mark same, which occurred at the earliest possibly in late 1933, but more likely in 1934 with the law against attacks on the party and its uniforms, an important law in the Gleichschaltung and the hollowing out of due process in Germany at the time.

Here are two labels from caps I likely think date to 1934/5.

The top label is in Kupper enlisted cap from an nice ensemble I should have bought for little money, but failed.

The 2d label is of this man Phillip Dinkel, whose commissioning was in March 1935. He was in an Allgemeine SS unit in Baden, the 32 Sta. think. He had a early party number and an even earlier SS number.