courtesy of my cross-town friend:
A tunic you don't see every day
courtesy of my cross-town friend:
“Show me the regulation, and I’ll show you the exception.”
A reserve Admin tunic?
It's the uniform of a Beamter auf Kriegsdauer [lit. "official for the duration of the war", i.e. the officials' equivalent to the Sonderführer.]by carpediem
Rank is Kriegsverwaltungsinspektor. (A few rank designations would be possible if going by the insignia alone, but the "K.V.I." on the tailor's label tells us that this is the right one.)
Thanks Andreas! Not one I have ever heard of! What did they do?
This is a rather complex subject, but I'll try to condense it as much as possible:
Dating back to the 18th century, the administration of the German armies had traditionally been undertaken by officials [Beamte], who had been identifiable by special uniforms and insignia since the 19th century.
These uniformed officials were in charge of a wide range of matters that would have been the responsibility of soldiers and/or civilian employees in other nations' armies. Sure enough, this included many purely administrative fields (such as fiscal administration, payment- and pension matters, record-keeping, archives and libraries, facility management, procurement etc. as well as the military legal system), but there was a wide range of technical officials as well, ranging from low-level maintenance craftsmen to highly trained engineers and scientists engaged in military R&D. Others were teachers, instructors, remount personnel, meterologists, medical specialists etc. etc.
The acute manpower demands of the war meant that there were not enough regular career officials around to run the greatly enlarged army and make up for losses; yet, permanently enlarging the corps of officials by appointing more of them was impossible or at least impracticable for a number of reasons.
Thus, the pre-war mobilization plans instituted the concept of the Beamter auf Kriegsdauer (Beamte a.K.), i.e. "officials for the duration of the war." These men were appointed as temporary military officials solely for the duration of the war. This was always intended as a non-permanent stop-gap measure: The Beamte a.K. were to be trained until they were qualified to be taken over as Beamte des Beurlaubtenstandes (Beamte d.B.), i.e. reserve officials. An order of 11 Aug. 1943 ordered the Beamte a.K. to be abolished, with all personnel taken over as Beamte d.B. or, if this was not possible, as soldiers by the end of that year (with a few exceptions). This was still not fully implemented by at least autumn 1944.
Last edited by HPL2008; 06-22-2018 at 08:17 PM.
Excellent! Thank you Andreas! I have learned something new for sure! One last question, did the practice of having these officials continue into the Bundeswehr and NVA post war?
What would we do without Andreas??? Certainly we would not learn as much.
And a beautiful tunic btw
"Please", Thank You" and proper manners appreciated
My greatest fear is that one day I will die and my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them
"Don't tell me these are investments if you never intend to sell anything" (Quote: Wife)
The Bundeswehr does not have uniformed officials and never had them. In fact, the separation of the actual armed forces and the armed forces administration is laid down in the constitution:
Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
(I must admit I am not familiar with the finer points of the NVA's organisation, but I am not aware of them having uniformed military officials, either.)
It is indeed an excellent tunic and now I know why it is such a rarely seen one. Thanks stonemint for sharing your photo and, as always, thanks for sharing your knowledge Andreas! As FB would say, both stalwarts here whose work is exemplary.
Very interesting and impressive tunic. Beautiful condition.
I have only the more typically encountered type of HV tunic in my collection. With the HV style collar tabs, not the Sonderfuehrer style collar and tabs.
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