Gendarmerie Ensemble

**stonemint** · 12-19-2008, 05:21 AM

I am not a uniform collector, but sometime I have to buy one to get the hat. (No, I don't split them up later.) This is one of those cases.
This is an overcoat and visor cap for a Hauptmann of the Gendarmerie (TR Rural Police.) Orange was the Gendarmerie's Truppenfarbe (equivalent of waffenfarbe.) What is rare about this piece is the fact that the underside of the collar facing is also done in orange, a very rarely found option.

Both hat and overcoat are from the same man, and tailored by the same tailoring company, the legendary firm of Wilhelm Welhausen of Hannover/Kassell. Both are in stone-mint condition--I have a feeling this man went to war and never came back.

**Espenlaub Militaria** · 12-19-2008 05:21 AM

We also buy and trade your items and full collections!

**stonemint** · 12-19-2008, 05:26 AM

Visor has the highest peak of any visor I currently own:

**stonemint** · 12-19-2008, 05:27 AM

Interior--WW incorporated tailoring shears into it's logo:

**stonemint** · 12-19-2008, 05:29 AM

Greatcoat label--it was very rare during the Third Reich for a Tailoring house to also be a haberdasher:

**stonemint** · 12-19-2008, 05:31 AM

Calling card for Welhausen, probably from the Kaiserreich era. As you can see, they were no "mom & pop" shop. Alas, they did not survive the war.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-19-2008, 05:44 AM

Your Welhausen card is from the pre 1918 era, as one of the branches of this firm was in Metz in Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen. The firm was wide spread in the II Reich.

I bought my first and only Welhausen cap in California in 1970 or 1971. It is the Jaeger cap illustrated in the Hayes book, which ended up in the collection of a noted collector of Panzer and SS regalia. When I bought the thing, it was in new condition and of particularly fine craftsmanship. It cost exactly 35 dollars.

Very nice images and this cap has an extraordinary shape.

Maybe the craftsmen there made this cap to fit someone's odd head or elongated face....

thanks and congratulations on your nice things.

Loden coats and Joppen often have the reverse of the collar in facing cloth, too. It is a fairly common practice even today.

patrick1974 · 12-20-2008, 10:38 PM

Very nice set.

**stonemint** · 04-10-2009, 04:32 AM

Schupo ensemble, with the rare police-green reverse-collar facing in doeskin: (about as close as one can get to the hyper-rare Schupo general's overcoat)