Muetzenfabrik

[Astrath]

Attachment 918203Attachment 918204Attachment 918205Attachment 918206Attachment 918207Attachment 918208Attachment 918209Attachment 918210Attachment 918211Attachment 918212SS caps were also not especially costly, by comparison.

- - ------- - -

I lost out on the VA SS 1938 price list for the Allgem. SS and am in a funk.

It's all part of your collection ??
I almost had a heart attack now so happy now ... God, this is heaven.

[Astrath]

Thiele & Steinert was probably the finest maker of cloth insignia during the TR.
These are some pics of the inside of their factory that were sold on Ebay recently:

These beautiful women are responsible for this topic exist today, sensational, unbelievable to see these photos.
Astrath

[Friedrich-Berthold]

It's all part of your collection ??
I almost had a heart attack now so happy now ... God, this is heaven.

Yes, it is......I did not get the 1938 price list, though, which gripes me.

- - ------- - -

These beautiful women are responsible for this topic exist today, sensational, unbelievable to see these photos.
Astrath

I have to say that these cap firms also used slave labor, too, so we should not romanticize it all, either...

[Astrath]

Yes, it is......I did not get the 1938 price list, though, which gripes me.

- - ------- - -




I have to say that these cap firms also used slave labor, too, so we should not romanticize it all, either...

What a fantastic thing, only these items from your collection already be worth all my collector life, hehehehe, here there are no such things, it is simply impossible to find something to buy, the only way to get you to buy something is vendors in the US or Europe. What makes me really hard collector of life due to high prices and also by the existing tax burden in my country, for example, a cap which costs $ 1,000 when landed at Brazilian customs costs over $ 600 to be withdrawn, the import duty is 60%, that's ridiculous, but true.
Two and a half years ago I bought two swords Paul Hogle in Canada, it took me three months to be able to remove customs and had to pay the amount of 6 swords, because the amount of taxes is enormous.
But I'll still win the lottery and buy a lot, hehehehe excuse my humor, this Brazilian thing.
As slave labor, it calls my attention, you could tell me if this happened before the war? Or only during the war?
For last year I visited the Sachenhausen concentration camp near Berlin and was told that many prisoners worked for Mercedes and BMW.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I am very sorry to read of the difficulties of your collecting in South America. A very sobering thing, indeed. We in the USA are spoiled in so many ways, and I am intensely aware of this fact, having lived overseas for a significant part of my life. Labor shortages were constant in the uniform trade, actually, but I should check as to when slave labor started, as I think in wartime, but I do not know. The SS economic enterprises used slave labor from the outset, of course, but many of the industrial cap firms we discuss here also used slave labor, a fact unremarked by Wilkins, who tendentiously white washes these personages of their complicity in Nazi crimes large and small, the theft of Jewish property
and forced labor. The biography of the Assmann brother who constructed the SA Zeugmeisterei and then RZM outlet in Berlin was viciously Jew baiting, and he made no bones about it in the glory years of the regime.

[Astrath]

Those are nice, but Hertie (which was Aryanized) was a major department store, whereas the firms we are interested in did not seem to have a budget for adverts in the manner you expect.

Here is a sample of advertising from Uniformenmarkt, quite typical of the era and pretty modest by our Gulliverian standards. I draw this conclusion from reading many articles in UM as concerns the goals and techniques of advertising, which was also seen as American and foreign in the Germany of the era. That is, business practices of the era did not immediately result in the kind of glamor public relations we have come to expect as normal, or even as seems to have been engaged in, such as it was, but edged weapons people....who were concentrated in more or less one locale, versus the headwear industry and trade throughout the Reich. The history of advertising in Europe in the 20th century is very interesting and there are excellent books on the contrast of US and European practices of the time. I even own a handbook on Nazi methods of commercial advertising for which I paid a chunk of dough.

Wilkins showed this, but not in context, that is, along with a lot of other really very small scale adverts entirely typical of the era. When you take things out of their context, then they make much less sense.

Mr. FB, you could share something deeper about propaganda in the Third Reich ??
That would be quite interesting.
Thank you so much.

[Astrath]

Mayser is still in business and makes highly fashionable head wear at a high price. I think I own one of their felt hats I bought in Wien.

As you know, the RZM divided the head wear or cap industry into those firms with industrial production and those with artisanal production. What you likely do not know is that with the advent of the III. Reich, a shortage of skilled unfirom cap makers eventuated, granted the depression, and the UM has a lot of articles on the need to increase rapidly the skilled hands to make the objects we collect. This fact comes through in my cap making book, too. (not that I wrote it, but I bought it....UM sold it too...) The cap making industry and trade was highly cyclical, having lost its military base after 1918 and only regained same with suddenness in 1933 with the onset of the Nazis and then rearmament. There are many articles on this score.

The UM also makes much of the process of rationalization and greater efficiency as a result of Taylorism, which despite the Nazi emphasis on artisans and the preservation of the estates and the guilds, nonetheless was also manifest in the new regime. That is, Fordism, production line making more bang for the buck nonsense with which we are still suffocated almost 100 years later. This push pull between the need to become a big, speedy, and efficient organization versus the need to uphold quality and standards associated with guilds and the estates is also quite dramatic in the articles. Further, there is much made about the perils of lowering quality to cut prices and otherwise adjust to the mass demand for uniform caps. This is where the UM is especially interesting as concerns the real dynamics of what was, in fact, a highly controlled market and why, for instance, my own area of black SS caps declined in quality of make in the course of the 1930s. That is, the dominant role of endless rigid price controls and oversight of the market via the RZM as well as the imperative of the cap makers to keep out the cheapo imitator, which was also a Nazi racist argument used to drive Jews out of the clothing trade.
Uniformenmarkt is not quite as Jew baiting as Stuermer, but it surely is up there.

You should know that the Nazi war economy, which really began in the course of 1936-1937 gave full employment, but it also used up all the foreign reserves and otherwise overheated the German economy is a highly profound way. This fact also emerges in the editions of UM prior to 1939. Thus the boom in these objects was not associated, per se, with limitless profits in a free market. Quite the opposite. I am not an economist, but plainly these firms operated somewhat between the devil and the deep blue sea as regards business conditions.

Also more interesting to think about than dumbo cap badges.

Happy hats and I urge those who read here to invest in Berlitz or subject these things here to a translator automat.

Happy new year and thanks for the nice hat advertising and thingies.

Mr. FB would like to clarify the RZM code controlled prices?
RZM also controlled the quality of parts and the amount of produced items ??
Thank you again.

[Astrath]

I am very sorry to read of the difficulties of your collecting in South America. A very sobering thing, indeed. We in the USA are spoiled in so many ways, and I am intensely aware of this fact, having lived overseas for a significant part of my life. Labor shortages were constant in the uniform trade, actually, but I should check as to when slave labor started, as I think in wartime, but I do not know. The SS economic enterprises used slave labor from the outset, of course, but many of the industrial cap firms we discuss here also used slave labor, a fact unremarked by Wilkins, who tendentiously white washes these personages of their complicity in Nazi crimes large and small, the theft of Jewish property
and forced labor. The biography of the Assmann brother who constructed the SA Zeugmeisterei and then RZM outlet in Berlin was viciously Jew baiting, and he made no bones about it in the glory years of the regime.

Indeed history shows us that there is no glory without many of these things, what's going to weigh on my conscience on these items produced on the basis of slave labor, this is very bad.
I know Asmann was a major manufacturer, from buttons to badges, but Asmann was a single company or a number of dealers who produced for him?
I do not get it right, Asmann was responsible for creating the RZM code ??
Sorry to ask so many things, please sir FB, answer when possible and if I'm bothering please do not hesitate to let.
Thank you so much.
PS: I have a great interest in the Jewish question, including reading a book Erick Larson, I came across terrible things done before the war, absurd things happened, the role of SA seems very evident in his book, nor will I mencionaro role of SS because it is like war dogs without training.

[Astrath]

Phenomenal, F-B! You are correct about the limited interest in the manufacture and retail of these items--there are maybe 10 of us who share your passion.

I have heard of Uniform Stubben, and have seen a hat with their label, but of course I cannot find it now.
Also interesting to see the A-SS visor for sale in 1942, once again refuting common "myths".

The visor cap display the officer is looking at also appears to feature a nice Teno leader's visor.

Thanks again, and if you get ahold of that Meister Muetzenmacher, tell him we have a job for him!

What would be the A-SS cap?
What the myth behind its manufacture? He would have ceased to be manufactured in 1942 ??
Thanks

[Friedrich-Berthold]

One of the Assmann family was commanded by Goebbels to create an SA supply organization, in very modest form, in Berlin ca. 1927. This brauner Laden became a fabled part of the Nazi struggle for Berlin led by Goebbels against the socialists and the communists, as well as the Weimar government generally.
Assmann told his story ca. 1936 or 1937 to the UM correspondents, and this initial phase of the NSDAP and SA in Berlin was intensely anti Jewish, and also against
Jews in the Berlin textile trade.