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It says:




"Pious memory in prayer
of our dear eldest son and brother

Josef Floßmann
wood technician

As said above, he was in the Army.

The Army designations for the two lowest Private ranks (Schütze/Oberschütze, Kanonier/Oberkanonier, Reiter/Oberreiter etc.) were adopted by the Waffen-SS in 1941...

Getting back to # 414..:





To avoid confusion, he died at Kälberbach, in the district of Crailsheim, in the state of Württemberg.

It says "south of Sitkouce", although I can't find any reference to a place with that name.
It might be Sytkiwzi [Ситківці] in the Ukraine, but this is far from certain. Geographical designations on...

I see that they were from my hometown. Achdorf was once a separate community but had already been incorporated into the city of Landshut in 1928.

I once even had a co-worker named Kaltenbacher. He...

Beg to differ, Mo. "Terrorangriff" refers to an Allied bomber raid.

By the way, the Beutelhauser grouping mentions the mayor of Straubing, Josef Reiter, taking part in the funeral, also acting as...

It's Tahure. He was killed in the Second Battle of Champagne.

The name in question is Toni Iller.

ČSR is the abbreviation for the Czechoslovak Republic [Czech: Československá republika / German: Tschechoslowakische Republik] as used from 1920 to 1938 and...

It says he was KIA at "Stara-Buda, southwest of Tschaussie". As always, transliterations can make places hard to identify, but I think the "Tschaussie" in question would appear to be Chavusy in...

That is not unusual at all. Death cards as such have no military connection whatsoever, but are wholly civilian items.

(Of course, in the case of serving military personnel who died in the war, it...

Death cards are no military matter; they were and are ordered and paid for by the deceased's family, who provide the photograph, choose the design and text and also decide about the number of cards....

The wording appears to imply that he was attacked as an individual, not as a member of a unit that came under attack. The full translation of the text referring to the deceased is:



"As a...

It's not a very common first name, but not that unusual either. Nowadays, it's a bit of an old-fashioned name, but back then, it would have been found more often.

This first name is of Latin...

Kriegsoffizieranwärter, lit. "War Officer Candidate", i.e. an officer candidate selected from the enlisted ranks for the wartime officer replacement program (as opposed to the peacetime career...

Of course, the problem with finding Russian places based on references in German documents is always that the German spelling is a transliteration from the Russian/Cyrillic one.

Often, several...

It says Kriwawizy, actually. I can't find the place as such on the map, either, but google-ing for it yields several references to soldiers who died at that location. The secondary information at...

Do you mean with the text about the deceased man? It translates as:


"As a pious memory to Gefreiter
Heinz Neugebauer
who has fallen on the field of honor

Do not think of me as gone, for I...

It's the collar patch for the Pioniersturmbann [= Engineer Battalion] of the SSVT.

It is interesting to note that all three of these young men died in accidents, one of them (Eggenberger) three years before the war broke out:

The cards state that Obergefreiter Anton Eggenberger...

Both the term Reserveoffizieranwärter and Reserveoffizierbewerber existed and described reserve officer candidates. (Although a more literal translation of the term "Bewerber" would be "applicant".)...

No death in this letter whatsoever. A private-ranked soldier is writing to a relative (most likely his brother) about his possible assignment as a motor vehicle driver or in a repair workshop. He...

Reserveoffiziersbewerber = Reserve Officer Candidate.



Wouldn't want to chew his bread, Bill: It's Steinmetzgehilfe, i.e. a stone cutter's assistant.

It's impossible to generalize or give an average number.

Death cards were (and are) ordered by the deceased's family who also decide on the number of cards required. The cards are handed out...

So it is. I only just noticed something in the original post: The picture is blurred, but it looks to me as if the correct year (1944) actually appears on the other side of the card on the...

Yes, that's right. This would have been sent to the people who had partaken in the funeral and/or sent or expressed their condolences.