Goering white cap fake ca. 1973

[Friedrich-Berthold]

In the summer of 1973, I worked in Vienna and Salzburg to get my German in order, whereby I went to Carl Sieder in the VII Wiener Gemeindebezirk to see their works. I saw a cap of this type there, freshly made.
The issue arose on the ding dong website because of this image. Sieder made fake Nazi stuff and real insignia for the Wiener Linien and such. The proprietor there was very open about the fakes they made, being part of the culture of the time. Fakery has long been a central aspect of life there, see the Third Man of Graham Greene, but it did not start in 1946, either.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The VII district is my base in Vienna, but I have not been back to the Sieder locale since that distant time. The VII district includes the Maria Hilferstrasse, the clothing center of Vienna, and, in its time, a place for the retail of uniforms and such.
As the leading court city in central Europe, the place had a well developed crafts, artisans and industry to serve court, the army, the bureaucracy and the clergy with regalia and such. Some of this glory still exists.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

What would life be without purported Nazi personality items with no basis in fact to flummox and dazzle us into madness?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Or to bore us totally to numbness with the same old, stupid thread as read ten thousand times lamenting human cussedness? Do we need this place to remind us of human weakness, greed, stupidity, that is, the seven deadly sins, when such is otherwise trumpeted from every other place in our confused world?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I was at a gun show twenty years ago when a zombie dealer, who actually apparently worked on the bridge (see my other picture... the red lead paint must have gotten to his brain) exclaimed to me how he had a black SS uniform of an officer shot by the GI in the last moments of the war with a lurid bullet hole and such. I heard about it for years, but the uniform never appeared, just as such lurid things have always never appeared. He also had an SA dagger which he claimed was that of Hess, and when I told him that Hess was in the SS and not the SA, the man then brandished the dagger at me in a rage borne, no doubt, of madness as a result of lead poisoning. He was also angry when I told him of my professional bona fides (as contrasted to his), which was akin to murdering his kitten---he went berserk. I should have had him arrested, but what's the point? It is all the same, really, and has been thus for me since I started in the 1960s. Es ist mir voellig scheissegal.

[ObKrieger]

I was at a gun show twenty years ago when a zombie dealer, who actually apparently worked on the bridge (see my other picture... the red lead paint must have gotten to his brain) who exclaimed how he had a black SS uniform of an officer shot by the GI in the last moments of the war with a lurid bullet hole and such. I heard about it for years, but the uniform never appeared, just as such lurid things always never appear. He also had an SA dagger which he claimed was that of Hess, and when I told him that Hess was in the SS and not the SA, the man then brandished the dagger at me in a rage borne, no doubt, of madness as a result of lead poisoning. I should have had him arrested, but what's the point? It is all the same, really, and has been thus for me since I started in the 1960s. Es ist mir voellig scheissegal.

I've been kicked out of shops before, but your story takes the cake! Madness...

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Well, as rule, I am not kicked out of shops, either, but this was a gun show in a large, historic venue. I should have called the gendarmes, but the man was unstable and it would not have ended well for all concerned. I cannot remember his name. he is probably long dead by now. The man was a total whip, but in my nearly fifty years experience, he was a man who cleaved to the average and about whom I do not waste much effort in this space. I mean, who wants to read all the drivel, really? I have met hundreds like him, disappointments all and a waste of humankind's attention and a nemesis of hope. Today his equivalent is in the internet and everywhere. The stories they conjure are equally nonsensical and the daggers they wave are digital, whereas there was at least some poetry to a lunatic with a knife in real life. My goal has been to take the high road with as much evidence of rare, authentic material as possible and add value with further focused research in original sources as motivation to others.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

In any case, the reason I mention this is the fake white cap was posted on the ding dong site, and nobody much could decipher its origin. Its origin is Germany or Austria of the early 1970s at the latest. Or maybe it sprang from the unpleasant looking pods in the Hollywood Hills in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or the like. In any case, it is an old fake. And Atwood did not make it, and neither did Breuer, either. I never met Breuer, but he might have been amusing. The man I met in Sieder was pleasant enough, surely. He was also of an age to have been a young man in Anschluss Austria, as were many I knew that summer and who taught me a lot about Vienna and Austria in the 20th century.

[ObKrieger]

Well, as rule, I am not kicked out of shops, either, but this was a gun show in a large, historic venue. I should have called the gendarmes, but the man was unstable and it would not have ended well for all concerned. I cannot remember his name. he is probably long dead by now. The man was a total whip, but in my nearly fifty years experience, he was a man who cleaved to the average and about whom I do not waste much effort in this space. I mean, who wants to read all the drivel, really? I met hundreds like him, disappointments all and a waste of humankind's attention and a nemesis of hope. My goal has been to take the high road with as much evidence of rare, authentic material as possible and add value with further focused research in original sources as motivation to others.

I know you often feel as if your efforts go unappreciated, but I and many others do read your threads with interest. I have most of your photos saved to my hard drive in a folder I named 'FB Collection'.

Anyway, I thought you were German. Why did you have to go to Vienna to get your "German in order?"

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I know you often feel as if your efforts go unappreciated, but I and many others do read your threads with interest. I have most of your photos saved to my hard drive in a folder I named 'FB Collection'.

Anyway, I thought you were German. Why did you have to go to Vienna to get your "German in order?"

Thank you. My pictures are put here for the expressed purpose that young people imbibe them for their betterment. Everyone should go to Vienna to improve their German, and to learn art, music, and culture.

for instance, in this case

Helmut Qualtinger - Der Herr Karl - YouTube