family Book to prove Aryan decent

[John Brandon]

I haven't shown this before, but I thought it was time it got an airing. A really super quality "Family Tree" book issued to an NSDAP member, later Army Officer proving his true decent.

The colours are just striking in red and gold. The writing is just super, it just goes to show you how much pride the Germans had. The book itself is A4 size, and it hasn't been fully filled out, but it's half way there but it goes back to 1640 something. There is quite a bit about his wedding. Some nice shots of the wedding and isn't she a babe?

I am doing night school for German, and my tutor comes from the Ukraine, when i asked her to translate, she was not amused, saying something like the Germans ruined my country

some people have no sense of humour

that's life!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

That is a very nice piece. If you ever want to sell it, please let me know. Yours is the super duper Ahnenpass. There is a new scholarly book on this custom embodied here, the citation of which I shall include later.

This kind of thing was formerly a tradition of the nobility (without the racial piece...) which then made its way into the bourgeoisie in the 19th century, and they added the racist bit with vulgar science of Rassenkunde, and there you have this vital aspect of Nazi dogma made into law after 1933.

In this case, your Nazi came from more refined circles in society and was intent on demonstrating politesse and social graces in the new racial order. You notice that the father of the bride (this attractive woman born in 1921) is from the family of a Diplom Ingineur, that is an engineer with university degree, which even in my day in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s had high value. The Nazis were also very pro Arbeiter der Stirn, i.e. the working man with the brain, for whom the III. Reich offered unlimited chances for advancement.

For those of us not born in Germany or Austria, the structure and character of central European society is an endlessly interesting theme. Granted my professional life, I get to see a lot of it at close range.

Thanks for showing this to us. Much better than comparison shots of moldering "sculls."

[John Brandon]

FB
your command of the English language (which is not your own) never ceases to amaze me. You have a way of putting things down on paper, that just seems "right"................ They say that the only people that cannot speak the English language correctly, are the English. And I have to agree.

I do like this book, even though it is difficult for me to translate, what I do know is that it was written in by an educated hand. Far more educated than I.

Of course everything is for sale, and to me, being an "ex" dealer, It's just a book (kidding)

Thank you for the comments, it means so much coming from you

Drop me a PM

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Dear John, thanks for the kind words. but my style is cramped and puffed up. The scholarly book on your Nazi genealogy piece is:
Erich Ehrenreich, The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science and the Final Solution ( Indiana UP, 2007)

In fact, my father was born in London, but he grew up elsewhere.

The internet and these daffy sites make language more important than it might otherwise have been, and I write for a living, such as it is.

As you know, in Germany of the time, one of the requirements for all professional development was the curriculum vitae written in one's own hand. Penmanship was regarded as a crucial element of education and refinement. I was terrible in penmanship, actually.

But these personages have the penmanship to go with their upper middle class manners and aspirations for rank in Nazi society, which copied the mores and manners of the aristocracy.

If you live in the UK, then you understand this all better than some of our North American and especially US readers.

But this line of inquiry becomes political in themes that are pretty explosive.

But all this social hocus pocus in the SS which interests me was all taken from the transformation of the German middle class in the 19th century in the face of the industrial revolution and the rise of urban life and all its many charms.

In the meantime, I shall write to you and wish you also a merry Christmas and much refinement, politesse and admiring glances from beautiful women (the great grand daughters of this woman...) in the year to come.

[Paul D]

Excellent piece John thanks for posting it it 's a superb and very interesting piece of social history from the Third Reich period. One that many people would want in their collection i suspect, although a knowledge of the German langauge would be a prerequisite

I can only concur with you regarding the comments of FB.

FB your excellent use of the English language is a delight to read , as John has hinted at only we English seem to be at a complete loss as to how to express ourselves in our own langauge !!

regards

Paul

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Dear Sir, many thanks, but my English remains stuck in the mid 20th century. Such make me an anachronism on the internet. The future belongs to the Orwellian language of Newspeak with one dimension, filled as it is with these: symbols, which I have trouble using. I grew up in children's television (my father helped to invent it...) and I thereby aspired to go beyond cartoons as a young adult. Telegraphic language had a certain poetry to it, for those of us who can recall such a thing....teletypes and the like.

In any case, I like the Robert Graves book, The Reader Over Your Shoulder which he wrote during the second world war.

Such makes me more than odd.

Thanks again for your kind words. Onwards to the sunny uplands filled with foetid woolens in 2010.