Heini H and the 'crimped prongs'......stranger than fiction

[Friedrich-Berthold]

You are Welcome Friederich

Thanks again for finding this and do post here more, as we need you.

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And, how many crimped prongs lie hidden here on all these Nazi heads? What if Hugo Jaeger asked the men in the front row in 1938 or so to take off their caps and show the quizical eyes of the year 2013 the innards of their caps?

A very odd cause and effect, don't you think?

Jaeger could have asked them, also, what they had in their pocket as well as what was for lunch?

[BenVK]

However, others more prone to adhere to dogma and superstition are horrified if the badges were altered, or the sweat band was re attached or some repair was made in the course of the decades.

In any case, to each his own, naturally, but the actual record of the past makes such fundamentalists and blowhards into fools.

I understand my colleagues statement but I also disagree with it in some part.

The placement and importance that some place on the bits of alloy on these caps is, for the most part, ridiculous. I could care less that the prongs punch through the lining or not or whether certain sellers declare them original to the piece without any knowledge of how to determine that they actualy are, which most cannot.

To truly embrace this side of collecting is to truly embrace the fact that these hats are old and have passed through many inquisitive hands, many of whom have removed badges and placed different ones in their place.

The difference is when you consider the actual form of the hat itself. If a sweatband has been replaced, then there is legitimate reason to be suspicous that the hat is not all it seems to be. There are genuine reasons that such a elementary part of a hat may have been replaced during the period but the chances that it happened are slim and one should be wary of such things.

It's not a case of being a fundamentalist, it's being an educated and careful collector which is no bad thing when looking to spend several thousand dollars on a SS hat.

[BenVK]

I've owned a few SS hats but have handled many more that arrived on my doorstep in need on some sort of repair.

The only one I can be sure of that still had the original badges was a rather sad specimen of an NCO black hat. The cupal Deschler TK was so welded to the cap due to verdigris that it was rather difficult to remove (to aid with the restoration) plus there was also a crystallized spider carcass half attached to the inside of the TK and half to the cap wool. I regret having moved it and not taking photos because it truly was the epitome of "never touched".

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I've owned a few SS hats but have handled many more that arrived on my doorstep in need on some sort of repair.

The only one I can be sure of that still had the original badges was a rather sad specimen of an NCO black hat. The cupal Deschler TK was so welded to the cap due to verdigris that it was rather difficult to remove (to aid with the restoration) plus there was also a crystallized spider carcass half attached to the inside of the TK and half to the cap wool. I regret having moved it and not taking photos because it truly was the epitome of "never touched".

I think I recall this case.

We are glad you restore caps so well.

[BenVK]

I'm a bit disapointed by the lack of response to this thread.

There is such a large emphasise placed upon original in situ insignia when it comes to SS garments and prices reflect this but no one has any opinion of it?

[Datrus]

I have put in my 2 cents on it, which was not that much other than posting a pic of my wife late ROA volunteer friend Hugo von Senger wearing WSS camouflage I am not a SS collector by any stretch of the imagination so can't add much more. It's funny how it goes at times. Some pretty meaningless threads can go on forever and this one does not. Maybe some does not like the "reality check" Not everything, even in WSS went according to regulations. There is countless examples of this.

Regards, Lars

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I'm a bit disapointed by the lack of response to this thread.

There is such a large emphasise placed upon original in situ insignia when it comes to SS garments and prices reflect this but no one has any opinion of it?

Dear Ben, the level of detail manifested by this evidence puts the issue out of reach for the many with strong opinions, because the historical record is too complicated, too subtle, and too diffuse. It undermines their fundamentalism, and puts the lie to their blow hard, stentorian proclamations of simple truths for simpler minds. They should collect 1950s plastic lunch boxes with space ships and the man on the moon thingies. (...are they faked, too?)

I think it is a total hoot that Heini H. crimped his prongs in the wrong way. Sehr koestlich.....

In any case, the 1935/6 badge apparently emerged in part because certain SS men liked the army Hoheitszeichen and stuck it on their caps, and we know that Himmler had his own problems with military professionalism, granted his own short circuited military career as well as his role in bringing such pillars of German soldierhood as v. Blomberg and Fritsch to an untimely end in 1938. So, if the sources tell the truth, the new badge was an answer to the violation of regulations by some in an un SS like imitation of Army customs. One imagines Heini H. in his own nerdish, yet violent way putting on the badge himself---not as one of the nice young women in the cap firm would have done it, with a feminine gentle-ness, but in Heini's pathological attempt to inflate himself from nerdish son of a high school teacher into a Nordic warrior. Surely this sublimated rage always leads to crimped prongs in a situation like this.


Happy prongs to you all, and may all insignia remain in situ until the final reckoning.

[Datrus]

Dear Ben, the level of detail manifested by this evidence puts the issue out of reach for the many with strong opinions, because the historical record is too complicated, too subtle, and too diffuse. It undermines their fundamentalism, and puts the lie to their blow hard, stentorian proclamations of simple truths for simpler minds. They should collect 1950s plastic lunch boxes with space ships and the man on the moon thingies. (...are they faked, too?)

I think it is a total hoot that Heini H. crimped his prongs in the wrong way. Sehr koestlich.....

Happy prongs to you all, and may all insignia remain in situ until the final reckoning.

That was exactly what i meant that many might not like the reality check

Regards, Lars

[BenVK]

I totaly agree Lars, this "reality check" is something that no one wants to talk about and this is the reason why I distance myself more and more from collecting.

I don't know about anyone else but I'm pretty fed up with the constant advertisment of so called "untouched" items when the reality is that most are not.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with altered garements because, after 60 plus years, that's what most of them are, altered.

But the whole collecting industry seems to based on false appraisals by dealers and private collectors alike because the general consensus is that the buyer has to proove that maybe some things have been monkeyed with post war. That's just wrong IMO.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I have put in my 2 cents on it, which was not that much other than posting a pic of my wife late ROA volunteer friend Hugo von Senger wearing WSS camouflage I am not a SS collector by any stretch of the imagination so can't add much more. It's funny how it goes at times. Some pretty meaningless threads can go on forever and this one does not. Maybe some does not like the "reality check" Not everything, even in WSS went according to regulations. There is countless examples of this.

Regards, Lars

Well said. A collector should know the regulations, and know how the regulations were ignored, which formed a major part of military life, despite the emphasis on discipline and order.
Watch the filming of Kirst's 08/15 in You Tube which says much about the life of soldiers and the attempt to enforce discipline and its downfall.