ID Assistance Needed

[eddymac]

Total unknown. In possession of 90 year old Wave, says it belonged to relative. Any assistance is appreciated.

[Matt L]

Welcome to the forum. That's a WWI disc- belonging to a Josef Michalsky, born 9. November, 1899, in Redendorf/Kr. Hindenburg and he was an Artillerist- his first unit was the II. Ersatz-Abteilung Feld-Artillerie-Regiment 42, and his field unit was 3. Batterie Feld-Artillerie-Regiment 38. Nr. 269 was his roll number.

[eddymac]

Thanks so much Matt. Do you think it safe to b say authentic?

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

It is indeed authentic.

WW1 tags are not widely faked.

Cheers, Ade.

[Stacez]

Hello,

[...]born 9. November, 1899, in Redendorf/Kr. Hindenburg [..]

On the German WWI ID discs, place of living was shown NOT place of birth.

[Matt L]

Sorry, left out the 'he lived in'- but in the early 20th century, heck, even in the mid-20th century, where someone was born and where he lived were generally the same. Often, WWI discs have a physical street address- in this case it's simply a place, suggesting further he'd always lived there since apparently one could just write to the place and they'd know the name LOL

And yes, Ade's right, these aren't known to be faked much- I can't say I've ever seen a fake one. And it looks real enough anyway. It's the latest pattern WWI Erkennungsmarke- they started as a wide range of shapes and markings when each Regiment commissioned their own essentially; many were small and ovoid like the WWII Kriegsmarine discs, but with just a single unit mark and no means to break them. Initially it was just the unit and roll number, as was used during WWII. The large oval disc followed, where all the information in the world was included- name, home address, and all the units a soldier served in; presumably there were so many casualties, it was felt that saving time was necessary and rather than having to go to a unit to look everything up, it was right there on the disc. Then they changed the disc again to have the information duplicated and slits so the bottom half could be broken off- that way they could quickly collect information and avoid transcription errors. The last variant added a hole in the bottom half so many could be strung together and they wouldn't so easily be lost. Sometimes the hole was at one side, but normally it was at the bottom in the centre like on yours and later on all WWII discs (save the KM style). Unfortunately, I don't know of any specific timing to these changes, but I've had the impression the last form was in use by 1916- unfortunately, I can't recall just why LOL

[37Webbing]

I know this is kind of "off-topic", but not only the Germans did this with their Erkennungsmarken / ID discs / dog tags.
In Denmark, issued dog tags contained a wide range of informations, at least on the WWI, WWII dog tags, until we changed our tags to the US style tags some time after 1960. I think. I own a 1950 issued dog tag that I bought some years ago that was issued in the "old style".
They can be split on the middle, like the German ones, and contain information on: Name, number, "military" district the conscript belongs to, city of residence, blood type, and year of conscription / entered service.

Just though it would be interesting to compare them

The design is more or less "borrowed" from the Germans I think.

[Matt L]

I had seen some other countries' discs were similar or analogous to the Germans' style, but hadn't seen this specific type- very interesting! Somewhat oddly, the ones we still use today in Canada are very much like those the Germans issued to POWs during the war- a rectangular tag with break lines in the middle...

[Gazal Al Shaqab]

Hello,
By its "vertical egg" shape, the Danish tag makes me think a little about the Polish model 1931 tag.
On the Polish pre-war tags (40 mm X 50 mm), on one side there was the full name of the soldier and his religion (7 different possibilities, even if the majority was roman-catholic, "R KAT"), while on the other side was the roll number, the year of birth and the town where was the mobilisation center he depended from (if I am correct).

The photo is from some web site.



I found one another exemple on an "egg" (even if it is a narrow "egg") on a web site here:
Lars Gyllenhaal: Swedish Narvik Volunteer´s Dog Tag
As it says, it belonged to a Swedish volunteer in Norwegian army.

But maybe even more countries had such "eggs".

[37Webbing]

Hello,
By its "vertical egg" shape, the Danish tag makes me think a little about the Polish model 1931 tag.
On the Polish pre-war tags (40 mm X 50 mm), on one side there was the full name of the soldier and his religion (7 different possibilities, even if the majority was roman-catholic, "R KAT"), while on the other side was the roll number, the year of birth and the town where was the mobilisation center he depended from (if I am correct).

The photo is from some web site.



I found one another exemple on an "egg" (even if it is a narrow "egg") on a web site here:
Lars Gyllenhaal: Swedish Narvik Volunteer´s Dog Tag
As it says, it belonged to a Swedish volunteer in Norwegian army.

But maybe even more countries had such "eggs".

Very interesting, thanks for sharing this.
The close proximity of the countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Germany),
would make it possible that "unlicensed" copying of the dog tags with minor changes would take place.

Interesting with the religious orientation stamped on the tags. Certainly something we have never done here in Denmark.