SS cap in Poland and its cousin

[Friedrich-Berthold]

One also finds the latter kind of full jawed Totenschaedel in use on the kepi, Shaftmuetze, Topf.....
why certain pieces exist now and what they mean for the totality of this regalia is beyond my grasp.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

My purpose with this thread was to show something authentic, although not 100% so, because I am always exhausted by the torrent of lousy stuff and sophomoric posts that insult all concerned. This particular kind of cap with the "vorschriftsmaessig" bit and the early tag as well as the ventilation holes seems to have emerged early in the scheme of things, or not? I have no idea, and the secondary works do not have much to say either. Moreover, I am not a cap badge junky, nor do I assign metaphysical meaning to the backs of these dumb badges, just as I do not assign metaphysical meaning to the backs of buttons. Or to the color and composition of little boys' marbles on the school yard ca. 1959, when one kind of marble was invested with magical powers by young, porcine minds at the expense of the outsider among the cliques. The back of the cap badge thingy puts me in mind of that signal experience with property, rank, and in group versus out group in the dim reaches of the 20th century.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Authentic regalia of the SS is rare enough without some made up super categories of rarity and preciousness that say more about the guardians of such rarity in the present than they have anything to say about the object, as a thing in itself, to speak with the lexicon of German idealism and the classics of Kant.

It was somehow simpler when this junk was found in hock shops, coin stores, gun smiths, and shrouded in an innocent cloud of ignorance without the post modern super attitude of glamorous and celebrity dealers and status anxiety ridden collectors on a global scale, nicht wahr?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

A diagram as regards my skewed reference to Kant.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

"Fifty years from now," these young lads have said, "our brains will be so shrunken that we can only form the phrases : 'crimped prongs' and 'Deschler.' "

[Adrian Stevenson]

It was somehow simpler when this junk was found in hock shops, coin stores, gun smiths, and shrouded in an innocent cloud of ignorance without the post modern super attitude of glamorous and celebrity dealers and status anxiety ridden collectors on a global scale, nicht wahr?

Very true. I was once happy to know just what it was..

I will need second bottle of wine to try and make head or tails of the Kant diagram.

Happ New Year my friend!

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Very true. I was once happy to know just what it was..

I will need second bottle of wine to try and make head or tails of the Kant diagram.

Happ New Year my friend!

Cheers, Ade.

Happy new year, Ade, and thanks for your glacial patience with my poor manners.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thanks for this fine website, which is beating out the competition, too.

[Tricot]

Regarding sculls Deschler and others, how was this symbol chosen for the SS? And why?

Of course the totenkopf is a symbol of lauded cavalry regiments, the werewolf organization during Weimar.

Why did the SS adopt it? Who chose it, Himmler?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

My essay writing yesterday exceeded my norm. I do think, though, that all central aesthetic and propaganda decisions in the early years of the NSDAP were Hitler's and to a lesser extent Himmler. The Totenkopf is a generalized symbol in central European culture, as well as in the specific military and para military meaning. Robin Lumsden is quite expert on all of this in the variety of organizations in modern history who have used same. The best treatment of the SS symbolism by a scholar is in Peter Longerich's biography of Himmler.