Cav Officer Schirmmutze

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The Paul Kaps Jaeger cap I had was not unlike these in color, but it has a fiber peak. I should not have sold it, of course, but there you are. I had a lot of nice caps I got rid of in the past fifteen years.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I am going to Munich soon, so I shall look for the ghost of August Mueller and A 2/143. I wonder what I shall find?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

No end of foetid woolens then and now....

[BenVK]

The cap on the left is a Mueller Muenchen, and on the right is Lettel, Hannover. The Mueller Muenchen has been mine for almost forty years of ownership, and came with the heraldic crest, the meaning of which is unknown to me. The Mueller cap is of high quality, with a heavy leather peak. Neither is a field cap, but regular caps with leather peaks. They are more interesting than the cheapo things we have mentioned here. The Mueller cap has Silbergespinst insignia, not Alu. insignia.

Wonderful hats FB, the Mueller is particularly interesting with it's glossy laquered peak.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Wonderful hats FB, the Mueller is particularly interesting with it's glossy laquered peak.

Thanks. It is surely not cheapo. I imagine it was made to order, but who really knows?
I offer it as a commentary on the cheapo theme. The peak is the same kind of leather as used in Pickelhauben and its has retained much of its original finish. I am sorry that the images are not better, but my camera is a primitive one and I am a bad Fotograf. I also include a black SS officer's cap of the era 1937 from the Fa. Mueller elsewhere (in the thread on the fake Hess cap) or so which is also not a cheapo cap, either.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I like caps with the leather peak, in fact.

The cavalry cap at the head of this file is the last ditch, final straw product of the era of total war and mass mobilization with no extra textile frills. It has its own place in history, and we offer the contrast here via these images. The totality of the thing is what matters. The idea that in the midst of the scarcity of the post war world one was making caps to please the occupying troops goes against common sense as concerns the economy in the era of the black market, especially in the Soviet zone of occupation. One forgets rather too quickly two facts: a.) through 1947, Germans were starving, and b.) there was more than enough real junk of this type around to satisfy the souvenir market. Just look at the post war films in Germany (i.e. West Germany) about the final stages of the war, i.e. Die Bruecke, etc. The explanation for all modern phenomena that everything is a conspiracy says more about those who offer such theories, however much balderdash they contain, versus the real state of Germany in defeat before the currency reform in 1948 and the revival of normal economic life.

Contrasts of militarism prior to war and thereafter. Notice the childrens' feet. Please tell me that one used extra textiles to make caps for the souvenir market. One knows, however, that whatever spare military junk at hand was redyed, recycled, reused and otherwise demilitarized to feed a cold and starving population, i,.e CARE packages?

[BenVK]

Thanks. It is surely not cheapo. I imagine it was made to order, but who really knows?

I once owned an Erel sonderklasse Artillery cap with a leather peak, I can't remember exactly but I think it was a Private model. Most certainly made to order and I've yet to see another like it. I'll see if I can find a picture...

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I once owned an Erel sonderklasse Artillery cap with a leather peak, I can't remember exactly but I think it was a Private model. Most certainly made to order and I've yet to see another like it. I'll see if I can find a picture...

Marvelous. We know that these caps, in particular, were frequently made by hand off the industrial premises, i.e. somewhere other than in Erelhaus near the Alex. If only the walls there could talk?
This cap is also not a field cap, i.e. you cannot squish it.

The Kranz/Kokarde and the Gehirnbremse are Silbergespinst, which was also costly versus the alu. Effekten. I first secured it in the early 1970s, sold it during the 1980s, and bought it back in the early 1990s after a hiatus with another collector. Its original price was around 35 or 40 dollars. Money had more value then, surely, and the struggle to find these things was more sedate, polite, even good humored versus the tearing and ripping that unfolds today.

[Bochmann]

Interesting info on cap evolution. I guess that if the Wehrmacht were compelled to issue trousers without pockets or addtional fittings at the end,then the cap at the started this thread is equally valid insofar as it is also a part of the same epoch than those of its better made predecessors.

If it's original it's okay in my book.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Interesting info on cap evolution. I guess that if the Wehrmacht were compelled to issue trousers without pockets or addtional fittings at the end,then the cap at the started this thread is equally valid insofar as it is also a part of the same epoch than those of its better made predecessors.

If it's original it's okay in my book.

d'accord. I agree. Many collectors cut their nose to spite their face with the dogma of the "textbook" object which is anything but....