Gebirgsjäger Museum - Erkennungsmarken

[AlecH]

Couple of Sundays ago visited the Gebirgsjäger Museum at Sonthofen. The museum is put together and run by group of local enthusiasts - "Truppen u. Gebirgsjäger Kameradschaft Grunten" they did allow me to take photos. In the past this particular forum has helped me a good deal, identify different dog tags. So returning the favour - here's a photo of two Gebirgjäger Dogtags on display - everyone can be certain of the authenticity of this two. If your ever in south-west Bavaria, its well worth a visit. Museum open only on Sunday 10.00am -12.00am - its free entry, but you need to take your pass with photo as the museum is in the present day Gebirgsjäger Camp.
Best Wishes

[Matt L]

Very nice Alec- and this example illustrates beautifully how virtually every Kompanie in the Wehrmacht had its own, unique Erkennungsmarken; note how these are both GJE Btl 99, but they're very different-looking- one is the Stammkompanie, and one is the 5. Kompanie. So for a collector, seeing two discs from different units with the exact same text is a major red flag; even the same text from two different Kompanien can be a problem- although there are occasions where the Bataillon (or whatever main unit) would have the same text for all its subunits. Much of the time though, they're different.

This case may also illustrate something else- note the Stammrollennummern are very far apart; 295 for the 5. Kompanie disc and 1895 for the Stammkompanie one. That suggests a significant difference in issue date- possibly meaning the unit changed its marking scheme somewhere between the two- from using individual stamps to one dedicated main stamp ('G. J. E. Btl. 99) and then just individually adding the variable portions: the Kompanie and the Stammrollennummer.

[AlecH]

Hello Matt,
Reading your post and thinking about these high Stammrollennummern, it occurred to me as a old-time Heer Wehrpass collector, perhaps one reason the units had such high numbers - they were training units. Looking through various army wehrpasses - it would seem the men got called-up, go to basic training, where they got a wehrpass and were given a dog-tag number usually relating to their first unit (probably a training unit) mostly in wehrpasses the stay in the first unit is short -a few months then they move on to another company in the regiment or a completely different regiment in their training branch, but their dog-tag number stays the same and with them. Could it be a possible explanation ?

[Matt L]

I'm not sure I understand Alec- I didn't say the numbers were particularly high, just that there's probably a time difference between their issue dates; although the Stammkompanie wasn't a physical place a man was stationed, but just a place where a roll was kept so they could well have gotten many more men on their roll during a given time period than one of the numbered Kompanien. It's certainly the case that men didn't necessarily stay long in their very first training unit- there'd be induction training, then perhaps specilaized training, etc. but even if we take a Kompanie to be 150 men, for example, and the period at this first unit to be 2 months, the difference between Nr. 295 and Nr. 1895 could be as much as two years. It's even longer if the training period is more than 2 months or the number of men is smaller.

[AlecH]

Matt,
Perhaps I didn't expressed myself too clearly, I was musing about dog tags with high numbers in general and how they got them so high and how seemly soldiers were given the numbers on joining the training units. Not really directly commenting on the two tags at the thread start - hope that clears things. What you write about training units, numbers of soldiers processed and time needed, makes sense - no single training unit could have reached the high numbers on some of the dog-tags. Can only think, maybe training units were allocated blocks of numbers i.e. 5000 - 7500 which they gave out as the soldiers passed though. Only a guess. Cheers

[Matt L]

Ah, okay. The allocation of blocks of numbers only makes sense if there's a central roll, and most of the time it seems each Kompanie had one, so there'd be no need. In some cases it seems units made a LOT of extra discs- that accounts for some large numbers; in other cases it may well be that they either didn't have anyone actually stationed there but they simply kept a roll- like a Stammkompanie- or that the time men spent there was shorter and shorter, meaning more and more could come through.

[AlecH]

I remembered, I had taken photos of WW1 Gebirgsjäger dog tags at the museum - a set of two tags to different to two different soldiers. One Leonard Hillmayer must have been there at the very conception of the German Gebirgsjäger, he has a erkennungsmarke pre-dating the Gebirgsjäger - Schneeschuler Soldat I believe they were called till May 1915 then the Gebirgsjäger were formed. The other Karl Rottenbacher has two very similar erkennungsmarken, except one has a extra line J9R.35K. 799 which may indicate he transferred to Jäger 9 Regiment 35 kompany with roll number 799 - I'm unsure, a guess.