Another allgemeine~ss hat for discussion

[militarymania]

hi all,,thought i would post this to see what others had to say,,,my vote is copy/reproduction,,,all comments welcomed,good-bad-indifferent...thanks,,Robert

[Walkwolf]

I've seen this one or one just like it before.

I think 'Blackheart' ( Brian ) posted the same one.
As I recall it was a Latvian fake.

[Bob Hritz]

Agree, junk from Latvia made within the last 5 years.

Bob Hritz

[blackheart0866]

Yes, thats the same cap i found on a auction site, Bob stated it was a fake, and that they even faked the name tag.

They have an Fake Waffen-SS cap on there also.

Brian

[Friedrich-Berthold]

hi all,,thought i would post this to see what others had to say,,,my vote is copy/reproduction,,,all comments welcomed,good-bad-indifferent...thanks,,Robert

No where on the internet are to be found more authentic images of black SS officer's caps than here. Do share the hard work of some of us, and you will learn something of merit. Mr. Hritz is right about these, of course, but you will save yourself much heartache with a half and hour or may 45 minutes of quiet reading.

Mutual aid and self help is my motto, taken from the Marshall Plan in 1947. Why not do the same here? We are eager to offer mutual aid, but in a case as this, self help makes more sense.

sapere aude.

[Tricot]

Heck, even I can spot this bad one. Study can not compete with having the items in hand. Even then, one must conquer his own greed and will to believe.

Another forum had a smart idea, instead of looking at an object with the mindset of "what is right?" examine the object with a mindset of "what is wrong." You WANT it to be real. Don't. Want it to be fake. Then try and prove it is fake. If you can't, then maybe the item has hope.

You could create a checklist of what a proper visor SHOULD have, and the fakes these days are constructed with such checklists in mind. But the "tells" of a fake may almost lie in the realm of intangibles. Listen to your instincts. Walk slow. Ignore the sales pressure.

Questions to ask oneself; do all the features of this visor correspond to the same time period? (Visor construction, materials and labels evolved. Know their evolution.

Does the wear of all parts of the object correspond? Some of these fakes are rebuilt period items (bus driver visors, other civil items, etc.) As different pieces come together in a Frankenstein visor, make sure the wear reflects a cohesive, common history. IE: The visor peak my have much wear, but the sweatband is virtually pristine. The exterior may have the feel and smell of old cloth but the liner has a newer impression. This starts becoming very subtle.

I think we all want to machete our way into the wilderness and emerge with the treasure. It helps to have a guide. Get second opinions from people outside the deal BEFORE you buy. If the dealer will not wait for you to do your diligence, or will not authorize images of the item to be disseminated, do not take the gamble.

And please do not mistake me as anyone other than a collector who has compiled advice from other sources. My ignorance is terrifying in its scope.

Those are my thoughts of the day. Happy hunting people.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thanks to Mr. Tricot for a thoughtful post. Thanks for key idea of intangibles, something very German and very germane at the same time....

Since this summer is going to be a disaster for me, I shall leave to others the task of taking the data that others and myself have provided and rendering it into a usable whole.

Mr. Tricot and I have corresponded about the requirements of success in this undertaking, and forgive me all if I am curt or impatient, but the world outside of this little square has distracted me greatly in the last ten days.

The other aw sh!t in all of this is a simple fact: a small handful of us have access to real material that we can look at as we wish, and the rest only have the misleading and incomplete pictures on these sites. Many cannot make sense of things that seem logical and sensible to me, perhaps, because I make the blooper of assuming certain knowledge when this guess is in error. This lop sided situation is very unfair and I am deeply conscious of same, but I also know that even if I own more than one of these silly old hats, there were so many of them that they must also diverge from my limited exposure to them (which is nonetheless somewhat more than many reading these lines, who, in fact, have never seen a real SS cap..at all in real life.)

I also expect that people will grapple with the chaos of these sites and establish after some labor some greater knowledge and insight. I guess this assumption is too optimistic, or reflects my old school approach to Bildung. We cannot train people in hat recognition. I have tried to educate people about this regalia, with the generous aid of others who know more than I, and are willing to share a fraction of their knowledge. I make a stark distinction between education and training, between knowledge and information. It is impossible to train someone in this material, and the effort that unfolds on other sites gripes me alot, because much of it assumes away the imponderables.

But some out there have an expectation of entitlement (not you, Mr. D.) and expect us to perform like circus seals blowing a set of horns on command. I have made thousands of posts on this site and other sites where we all found each other at the start of the decade, and somehow I assume that some have read all of this oeuvre, which is a mistaken assumption.

Also, one of you recently posted a cap which I swear was made from material (pictures) I have posted, and so I have very mixed feelings about the push and pull of our tutorials.

In any case, the Baltic stinkers at the head of this file are such obvious fakes, I am a little baffled that they elicited a query.

Thanks to Mr. Tricot for his nice essay. Thanks to Adrian Steven for his website where we can exchange knowledge and other fine colleagues whose knowledge surpasses mine (with its many flaws...) and have made this place a success.

Sorry if I am curt, but the burdens of non internet life, that is, mortality and leaking diesel fuel have beclouded my time. In fact, I was supposed to be in Vienna just now, and I am not, so there....

sapere aude and Servus!

[Friedrich-Berthold]

riddles in enigmas. How many of these existed in their totality between 1932 and 194X and what did they all look like inside?

[aussielad]

...yes i agree totally with the comments .....i think if you like an item that looks "REAL" its "YOU" the person that has to live with it regardless if its "REAL" or not....

[Friedrich-Berthold]

One aspect of all of this that bears keeping in mind for those of you in search of the truth is this: the disorder and chaos associated with these things breeds, in turn, a sort of inflexible response in some to create a master list which becomes a doctrine and then a dogma.

The cult of training is part of the formation-of-doctrine dogma that often leads to a dead end. In all of this, the project (SS regalia) takes a life time, which younger people perceive as a kind of repudiation of their claim to greatness. Such is also quite normal, but in order to master the intangible and the imponderables, you do need time and experience. There is no short cut. The sight of all these "tolle Sachen" in the internet is also akin to the proliferation of pornography in the excitement or dulling of the senses.


Enough of my cultural pessimism.


Where is the man's hat in the picture below?