If the Kleiderkasse of then was like that of today, then it was/is a store more or less. I used to go to the Bw one in Koblenz ( a major garrison), which was a pretty simple affair and one bought from the stock on hand. I assume such applies to the image of what I am sure is the Verkaufsabteilung d Luftwaffe. Please look at all the other retail locale (Vertriebstellen) images I posted here that are no where else. This locale also looks like tailor shops I know in Vienna, actually.....except in my time one found fake Nazi stuff in the regalia trade district where Karl Sieder was located.
I am also certain that at the time no one gave a damn about whether the cap came from one maker or the other. The fuss about "prestige" cap makers is an artifact of US collectors of the recent past and has little to do with the subject itself on its own terms. These categories say something about collectors now, but little about the past itself. The Luftwaffe officers had other things on their mind (read the new and excellent biography of Werner Moelders...) and likely just wanted to live within their means amid the economic upheaval of the time. If what I write here seems harsh, then I quote Zarah Leander: "so bin ich und so bleibe ich..."
I am a professional historian who also has spent a lot of time around people who lived through this period (almost without exception they are mostly dead now...) and they were a pretty egalitarian and non snobby lot, which was and is a major reason I was so fond of them. How sad that the present is so suffused with consumerist hoo haa about status, when all the things in the present are just so much junk without any intrinsic value at all. We are drawn to this because of romantic notions of soldierly honor and the magic of the crafts, where a human being fashions something of quality with their own hands.....an event that is generally unknown in our world. Air forces are now busily being rendered into an arrangement or robot aircraft, with the romance of piloting degraded to the status of cavalry in 1910. How sad-- Outsourced and debased of any dignity like so much else in our society and economy.
Too bad you do not have a time machine, Mr. Chris, and can snag some of the trunks and fill them up with caps, daggers and other regalia. But most German towns had a store like this (Uniformschneider bezw Militaereffektenlaeden bezw. NSDAP Brauner Laden), and our collections are filled with their contents, in fact.
If one of you really wanted to go for broke, you could put an Inserat in a German newspaper and advertise for anyone who might have worked in any of these places, and, against the remote chance they are still alive (i.e. very young female shop assistant of the era...) then you might learn something more substantial than some guesses.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 08-02-2010 at 09:55 PM.
I also note that in the page of the catalog from the Verkaufsabetilung that Ben posted there is mention of cap repair (see last lines herein), which is, I think, borne out by the fact that there appears to be a loose visor in the display vitrine at hand. This little datum is revealing again to the point that caps were repaired in the III. Reich, thus giving the lie to the idea that the holy stitches so commented upon on other sites (i.e. the Erel magic stitch, i.e. the Wagner magic stitch) like the canals on the face of Mars may be more of a chimera than we think..... denkt daran. The catalog also suggests that save for the flag officer caps, the other items are had in stock. One military store in the Mariahilferstrasse in Vienna had storage on its premises for 10, 000 peaked caps. I repeat: 10,000. I assume the caps here in the above image are in the range 53 until 61 cms. which is fairly typical in hat stores, even today. Last summer I made friends with the people in the Adalbert Breiter store in down town Munich. It is a nice place, but no militaria at all, nor any hunting and forest clothing of traditional type.
This illustrated here was the central brauner Laden in Berlin run by the Assmann personage from 1927 onwards. The article on this establishment and the central figure in same, also pictured here, is compelling. Woolworth, in fact, was much reviled by the Nazis as American/Jewish retail at the expense of the artisans and small shop keepers. The irony is though Woolworth has vanished in the USA, it still exists today in Berlin. Berlin was and is a wonderful place.
Last edited by Friedrich-Berthold; 08-03-2010 at 05:19 AM.
Is the hat making extant today in Germany? Maybe they have some old filed in the basement.
Regarding this article, I would love to see it. You could upload the PDF to scribd or Mediafire and post the link.
by BenVK
I read an excellent articule today which delves into the whole German ethos of craftsmanship and tradition values which were in direct conflict with supplying the war machine, the place of the woman in the skilled workforce, the issues involved with unexpected orders of such things as camo jackets and the inability of the established clothing manufacturers to cope, hence the apparent need for the SS industry to get involved and meet demand, obviously by forced labour means in the camps but also by accuiring the latest technology in sewing machines and the like.
FB, you mentioned the main men involved in the technical and administerial side of the SS industry already. Their names frequently pop up and are highly praised for their industriousness.
Can I upload a pdf? I will try, it's a facinating read.
Another image from this series of what is likely the brauner Laden above. The retail of newspapers was an important source of NSDAP revenue in the Kampfzeit. These locales morphed later into the retail network of RZM vetted stores for NSDAP regalia. To be sure, the recent question has been the clothing cooperatives for officers of the armed forces, which would have been a different proposition surely.
Here as a contrast to the shabby little Nazi stores of the era 1933 is what the Nazis loathed, a Jewish owned department store on a grand and marvelous scale, the Tietz establishment on Alexanderplatz. It was "aryanized..." as was essentially all of the Jewish owned garment and retail infrastructure and trade of the metropolis. Especially here in Alex and its environs on the eastern part of Mitte abutting Prenzlauer Berg and the outer environs was a large part of the apparel business, which was then wiped out by the end of the 1930s. This building did not survive the war, but Alexanderplatz remains a vibrant place in the new Berlin of the last two decades.
Re: Muetzenfabrik
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by BenVK
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