Paul Kaps SS General's Schirmmeutze - potentially!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

By the way, this book I found in Vienna about nearby Iglau is based on a cache of photos of the K.H. Frank personage, and it is an extremely interesting and impressive chronicle of this Moravian enclave of Germans.....

[KSH]

By the way, this book I found in Vienna about nearby Iglau is based on a cache of photos of the K.H. Frank personage, and it is an extremely interesting and impressive chronicle of this Moravian enclave of Germans.....

Interesting pertaining to Schirmmützen uzw. or interesting as a historical document per se, my friend? It is now over 2 AM in the morning in the land of Nansen and Quisling, so: Gute Nacht!




Here a completely off topic poster used by Quisling's party Nasjonal Samling (National Unity) in Norway from my collection:




- Kenneth

[BenVK]

In my own view, there doesn't have to be a conflict between the younger and older generation of collectors.

There is much merrit to studying period documentation just as there is merriit in studying the difference between original machine sewing and modern day hand sewing which tries to mimick original machine sewing. All of these skills should be within the grasp of collector these days whether they are 50 or 18 years of age. The most frustrating thing that came out of the thread about this Kaps cap thread on the other forum for me was the fact that the owner said he had been collecting for 45 years! I actualy suggested 30 plus years but he felt the need to put me right on that.

Oh, frig it, I'm too tired now to go into this.!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The maroon madness, paranoid and stupidity website was and or is populated by those who make use of this Feindbild, i.e. old collectors are doddering fools and young collectors are young, digital mavericks, who are breaking the choke hold of the latter. This trope is bull sh!t, in that it is equally true that old people can be total fools with a heap of junk, and young people are whatever, that is, breaking the bonds of the suffocating past. However, who actually knows anything about the people who post here, really? Is the Kaps collector really a collector of 45 years? I have collected more or less that long, in fact, but who am I, really, other than my posts? In most cases, most posts do not reflect much more than "....is this sculll real, I found it in an old house...." or "....f@@k all dealers," ; or " or pet my blackie...." Ben is much younger than I am, and represents the next generation of persons not content with what one person on the other site characterized as "gun show old wives' tales" which I thought a pretty telling and accurate characterization. Adrian has made a nice site here where we can learn, but wars of generations and ad hominem attacks based on age or perceived age is highly acidic of the core principles here. The other factor is plainly that of envy, in that a young person with empty pockets is excited in his or her lust for foetid woolens by the pornography I place in the threads through my heap of digital foetid woolens. My goal is education, but the result is lust and disappointment. No wonder that bad manners result.

The digital dissection of caps would work better with some other mechanism and with a tighter circle of like minded souls, otherwise it turns into a lynching. The maroon site is the place of endless lynchings and what not that would have made members of the KKK quite proud.

As one grandee here pointed out, though, maybe I do not have a collection at all.
Maybe....maybe I am a sixteen year old girl in Iceland play acting as a saggy, tweed stuffed old fool with too much affect....maybe.

These kinds of insights lead us to philosophy and the conditions of our existence in society, culture, etc. and are best served, surely, by the persons on the other website whose education ended before the eighth grade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Interesting pertaining to Schirmmützen uzw. or interesting as a historical document per se, my friend? It is now over 2 AM in the morning in the land of Nansen and Quisling, so: Gute Nacht!



Here a completely off topic poster used by Quisling's party Nasjonal Samling (National Unity) in Norway from my collection:




- Kenneth

Very nice and interesting piece.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Why does anyone care about this junk at all?

[BenVK]

Why does anyone care about this junk at all?

I'm not sure FB!

Even more confusing is why we take photos of our items and post them for all to see? There must be something in everyone's DNA which makes us seek out compliments and admiration not just for ourselves but also for the items in our possession. Everyone does it....do you like the car I just bought, the new TV, the living room carpet, the SS visor cap? These are just inanimate objects yet we congratulate each other for the hugely skillful task of opening our wallets and entering a credit card number. Even when items have been found through endless hours of searching private sources and not just simply accuired from a dealers website, it's just luck and perseverance and is not a skill or talent in the same way as being able to play a musical instrument or paint a wonderful picture.

I do get very tired of reading the endless back slapping posts on these forums such as "great cap, congrats!" but am also as guilty as everyone else for posting such drivel because in most cases, there is very little new information to add but it would hurt the owners feelings if no one posted anything at all. I would feel upset if my new acquisition was ignored just like everyone else. Weird isn't it though? why do we attach personal feelings to objects? It's the cause of most of the arguements and bad behaviour we read about. It really doesn't make much sense because none of us actualy made any of these things with our own hands, whether they are authentic or modern fakes. In other words, a painter would have the right to feel very upset if no one liked his painting based on assumptions that it was a fake and not of his own work. We don't fall into this catogory at all though, we just buy these things, we didn't create them. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here?

I'll try again. I'm guessing but most might assume that I own a huge collection of TR hats? I must have because I spend most of my free time discussing them here and elsewhere on the web. Not true at all though. I have about a dozen hats in total at the moment and only about 3 schirmmutzen. For me, the satisfaction and appeal is not in the ownership, it's in the study. Looking at nice photos of hats is all very good but without the study behind these objects, there really is no reason to "care about this junk at all". I guess that's why I enjoy reading FB's post so much. "I learn something new everytime" and I first wrote that exact same sentence back in 2004.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Very thoughtful analysis in the face of my provocative post.

To be sure, I have hidden my own consumerism and narcissism in the cloak of knowledge, but I am actually a historian, and at least part of the reason I post this stuff is because, in an earlier time, when no such thing was possible, I would have been thrilled to see these things.

However, the fetish and consumer qua luxury goods piece operates here, to be sure, and causes much unhappiness as connected with an age of mass persuasion and mass consumption. The latter are now seriously out of whack, to be sure.

My goal is history and to illuminate the sources. However, the thousands of images I have witlessly uploaded in some four years now enables me to make these dorky collages, which I enjoy looking at for aesthetic reasons, since the pictures look better than the actual items. I live in a dark and dusty house, and because my fading eye sight is so bum, I cannot see the details. Especially not the special, secret and arcane dye stampings in the works of Saint Deschler on these caps I own.

Ben can have a huge collection or not, we measure his value here with his wit, knowledge and patience, upon which this site relies.

Thanks for the kind words, and perhaps with the holidays, I will have more time to find stuff in the RZM circulars. Did they post beyond 1935 on the site where these arose, by the way?

Thanks and my apologies for describing these things as junk, but at some level they remain that, because the Germans who taught me about their country in the 1960s and 1970s considered this stuff thus, like the big bomb that one recently found in the river bed of the Rhine in my beloved Koblenz.

Ben's impulse to associate value with the handicrafts and to illustrate what is more or less a lost aspect of our lives has also great merit. However, such a phenomenon is too subtle for many to understand. Marx spoke of alienation from one's work that ensued with the industrial age, I think, but I never read Marx in graduate school, or very much...mind you.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Still foetid and hopelessly woolen.

[BenVK]

Thanks for the kind words, and perhaps with the holidays, I will have more time to find stuff in the RZM circulars. Did they post beyond 1935 on the site where these arose, by the way?

Not yet FB I'm afraid, I hound them on a weekly basis and I'm sure they are pretty fed up with me by now!

In response to your comment in my interest in the handicrafts, you once again hit the nail on the head. The source of my frustration with the thread subject Kaps example was the fact that the owner seemed oblivious or at least un-interested in questioning the sewing details of his hat. For me, that's akin to collecting Japanese swords and having no desire to know how they were made.