Landsturmschein - J.R.26

[tbk0000]

Hi, I recently picked up this nice Landsturmschein set which included the Militarpass, Soldbuch and cover for a 32 year old who appears to have spent 1916 to 1918 in a special companie of the 1st Ersatz Batallion of J.R.26 at Magdeburg. I guess that the devil is in the detail but I am intrigued as to why there is no mention of any earlier military training. Would appreciate any comments from those with better eyes or German language skills than me - particularly his name and title (from the covers) and specialty. Thanks Terry

[drmessimer]

TBK0000: Here is a link that will probably answer your question competely. Colonel J's - Articles -Landsturm In order to read your documents, they need to be photographed so that they are at right angle to the camera. Or, better yet, scanned. Basically, the Landsturm, which was first established about 1812 was an untrained militia in two levels--young men and old men. One German source descibed the Landsturm as "die letzte Aufgebote" sort of the last reserves. Those are exceptionally nice looking documents and rather unusual. Nice find. Dwight

[drmessimer]

tbk0000: It looks to me that he had three given names, the first I can't make out, but it's the underlined word on all the documents. The next two are Moritz Jakob or Jakob Moritz. They appear both ways. His family name was Mette. He was born on 29 March 1884 and is either 5' 9" (1.76 m) or 5" 10" (1.78m) Both are given in the documents. I'm working from an old school book that has the Suetterlin alphbet in it, but the letters as they show them in the book don't always match what is written in those documents. That probably has something to do with everyone having his own writing style. Dwight

[tbk0000]

Thanks Dwight, I'll take some better angled photos (originals were at night so I had to angle them to avoid the camera shadow). I had a look at the very detailed Colonel J's article yesterday and picked up that he had probably entered the 32 year old second entry into the Landsturm - although this still doesn't fully explain how he was able to defer his entry into the military til 1916. I also read somewhere that the Landsturm was the equivalent of the 'home guard'. I wonder if his trade or profession had something to do with his deferral and apparent lack of combat service? I say this because his trade (Gewerbe) as listed in both books is a distinctive word with a distinctive o or u above it - and there is a similar mark above words on the first line of his Militarpass and Soldbuch cover (on his Militarpass this looks like it has been overwritten with Muskatier). As I said the devil is in the detail so any advice from a German speaker would be appreciated. Thanks Terry

[tbk0000]

Straight on pictures.