Muetzenfabrik

[BenVK]

Your thingy works about 95% of the time. It is better than a stick in the eye.

Excellent, 95% is very good for OCR plus it's really helping me to understand the Fraktur font as I go along. The name of the software is FineReader XIX for Fraktur. It's very expensive so I'm only working with the demo version right now which I think is time limited. ABBYY FineReader XIX Gothic Fraktur

PS, The subject matter of the converted UM article wasn't very exciting was it? A lot of hot frischluft so far!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The world belongs to the young technologists. I even taught myself Sutterlin, actually. With Frakftur you need to know all the "s" forms, as well as "p" and "k's which can trip you up. Otherwise it is really quite simple. Good ole' Schickelgruber banned it ca. 1942/3 with the revelation that the Jews invented Fraktur, which is really quite a hoot.

The nice thing about the article is also the images of the different sewing machines for the peaks, the piping, etc. as well as for ironing the seams and what not. The article also makes plain the Nazi idea of the moment that the human element, especially if that human being is racially superior and also well schooled in the Nazi ethos (fit into the social system...) is triumphant over the machine. It is not Fordism, but the Nazi version of assembly line and machines, but in the service of the Nazi ideal of society. It is an anti-American and also anti-Semitic idea. UM is very anti Jewish, actually, if you read it carefully, because its editors and authors were at war with free market ideas, as well as US ideas big in the Weimar Republic about the modernization of industry and society. That is, it is a Nazi answer to Taylorism. None of this has lost any of its relevance today, mind you. There is a deep skepticism in Germany about Anglo Saxon market principles and a defense of the handicrafts as the bastion of the social order of the guilds against modernization. This comes through in a pretty resounding way in UM. But I diverge from the cap making piece. People and machines always manifest ideas in society, as we see everywhere around us. Pi pa po.

IN CASE SOMEONE READING THIS THINKS OTHERWISE, I DO NOT PERSONALLY ENDORSE THESE IDEAS, I AM INTERPRETING AN HISTORICAL SOURCE, WHICH IS WHAT WE DO ON THIS WEBSITE RATHER THAN EMBRACE STITCH FAIRY HYPERBOLE AND BALDERDASH AS IS THE CASE ON THE MAROON FLAP DOODLE WEBSITE.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Excellent, 95% is very good for OCR plus it's really helping me to understand the Fraktur font as I go along. The name of the software is FineReader XIX for Fraktur. It's very expensive so I'm only working with the demo version right now which I think is time limited. ABBYY FineReader XIX Gothic Fraktur

PS, The subject matter of the converted UM article wasn't very exciting was it? A lot of hot frischluft so far!

The point of the article is to underscore to the people in retail part of the UM readership the value added and complexity of the uniform cap industry of the moment, as well as its export potential; and how prior to 1914, German caps went into the wide world, for instance, Latin America, where they established military fashion. The export dimension of UM was a significant piece because of the foreign exchange situation in the mid and late 1930s at which time the Reich had essentially walled itself off the Dollar and Pound trading space. Export of high quality German goods for barter was a goal of policy, so as to short circuit the international currency trade, such as it was in the Great Depression. The article describes the stages of cap making, underscoring the variety and flexibility of the skilled work force, which justifies the price of the sale of extra caps, a major item in the retail uniform trade. This latter point impeaches the assertion in the secondary works of iffy value as concerns the "astronomical" prices of these caps as an optional item of wear. The caps did not cost all that much if they were widely bought. The surely were not an "S" class Daimler Benz, to be sure, unlike what some English speaking authors suggest.

Go figure. Happy hats. I am going back to my foot notes.

[BenVK]

My inability to understand German even now that I can convert the font to a more readable one is my downfall here. It's useful to be able to paste the text into a online translator to get a feel of what's being said but it's very limited.
From the bits and bobs I have understood though in the pre 1940 publications, I did get a feel for exactly what FB is referring to. Machinery is talked about as a means just to help and not replace the handcrafts and there's a sense of nervousness and fear that runs through most of what I've read about the encroaching need for industrial scale manufacturing. It's a very strange conflict between trying to keep the traditional crafts alive and how they connect to the social, economic and nationalism strings of being German and the "vulgar" necessity of mass producing uniforms and weapons to win the war.

The point of the article is to underscore to the people in retail part of the UM readership the value added and complexity of the uniform cap industry of the moment, as well as its export potential; and how prior to 1914, German caps went into the wide world, for instance, Latin America, where they established military fashion. The export dimension of UM was a significant piece because of the foreign exchange situation in the mid and late 1930s at which time the Reich had essentially walled itself off the Dollar and Pound trading space. Export of high quality German goods for barter was a goal of policy, so as to short circuit the international currency trade, such as it was in the Great Depression. The article describes the stages of cap making, underscoring the variety and flexibility of the skilled work force, which justifies the price of the sale of extra caps, a major item in the retail uniform trade. This latter point impeaches the assertion in the secondary works of iffy value as concerns the "astronomical" prices of these caps as an optional item of wear. The caps did not cost all that much if they were widely bought. The surely were not an "S" class Daimler Benz, to be sure, unlike what some English speaking authors suggest.

Thank you for this FB, I know you are a busy man. I must admit that I feel a bit pleased with my self now because my understanding of the articule is not far off your explaination.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

My inability to understand German even now that I can convert the font to a more readable one is my downfall here. It's useful to be able to paste the text into a online translator to get a feel of what's being said but it's very limited.
From the bits and bobs I have understood though in the pre 1940 publications, I did get a feel for exactly what FB is referring to. Machinery is talked about as a means just to help and not replace the handcrafts and there's a sense of nervousness and fear that runs through most of what I've read about the encroaching need for industrial scale manufacturing. It's a very strange conflict between trying to keep the traditional crafts alive and how they connect to the social, economic and nationalism strings of being German and the "vulgar" necessity of mass producing uniforms and weapons to win the war.

Yes, indeed. Context is a lot of it, after all.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

But Ben is surely my hero as is Dr CMH to have tucked into this important, if not unproblematic source of the storied UM. If this were a history seminar, you'd both get "A"s while the stitch fairies and internet snake oil salesmen would go the principal's office with demerits.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This is a picture of Nazi caps, in case the above is too arcane and esoteric.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This is how they look without the bad plastic, but I do not know how to keep dust off of them (it is dusty where I live) as well as keep moths from eating the textiles. The cap stitch fairies have eaten my spirit, though, which has been revived by the generalized embrace of the UM CD by the yearning persons of this site.

[BenVK]

You surely need some of these FB!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

You surely need some of these FB!

Yes, I do. I especially like the kittens at play with the hat box.