Max Sella, Div. Totenkopf

[Paul D]

Another one of Max Seela and his famous goatee beard !!!

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Peter, thank you very much for those additional photos and background info on Seela. I never knew he was such an early member.

Hi Anders & Paul, thanks too, yes they are the more typical photos of him that I remember.

I would love to own that piped feldmutze he wear in the pic posted by Paul. What a superb and non regulation cap.

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This image of him with the fashionable and civilized goatee I know from elsewhere. There he does not look the Nazi fanatic. Thanks to Peter J for the vital details of his early SA/SS biography, and he was not a man of the first hour with Eicke's Mordbuben. I wonder what his professional background had been, that is, in the civilian world, such that he was in a technical unit?

Thanks to all for their worthwhile additions here. It is my consummate failing not have memorized the biographies of the SS Ritterkreuztraeger, but spending so much time with real men and women at arms as I do, this thing interests me less than the early biographies of just such men from say 1929 until 1940 or so.

And we all hope that colleague Peter will share more from his treasure trove with our eager band of seekers here.

[peter]

Seela was trained as a carpenter, but later simply referred to himself as an SS Fuehrer.
Peter.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Danke vielmals.

[d'alquen]

Peter,
I have Seela's SS number as 257 323.
D.

[vady]

>the expression in the eyes mirrors the destruction and carnage of the eastern front, surely. How could it have been otherwise?<

it's just as you say, FB. looks like an East Balt, nie? Or, maybe someone whose career path was a bit different: folkie paul stookey? (See Pic)

(and ade, how unusual was it for "goats" to be worn in the IIId reich. outside of the KM I've seen very very few beards...)

I think he rather looks like Eichmann, in fact. But you notice with all of the Rittekreuztraeger photos of SS men in the years 1942 and 1943, they look quite different than in the years before. The photos themselves are not as good; and the expression in the eyes mirrors the destruction and carnage of the eastern front, surely. How could it have been otherwise?

[vady]

if you see what I mean....

>the expression in the eyes mirrors the destruction and carnage of the eastern front, surely. How could it have been otherwise?<

it's just as you say, FB. looks like an East Balt, nie? Or, maybe someone whose career path was a bit different: folkie paul stookey? (See Pic)

(and ade, how unusual was it for "goats" to be worn in the IIId reich. outside of the KM I've seen very very few beards...)