Early SS Black Visor

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The worn cap on the inlaid table with the rust stains (post 4) and the mint example (post 7) are two early Kupper caps of identical make and varying preservation. They both include the fore head pressure logo. I do not have an interior image of the worn piece, but it is plainly a Kupper with the "16" license number.

This here is an officer's cap of similar date, also with the phrase. All of these either had the velvet gusset and/or a rubber pad behind the sweat band. The officer's cap is from a Hamburg maker seldom encountered, but which made NSDAP and it branches cap, A1 60, which is Apolka & Mueller.

Each day some new evidence comes to the fore. The officer's cap also has a small piece of fabric sewn between the sweat band and the cap ban itself.

I have illustrated all this elsewhere.

I hardly think these features meant very much to the cap maker of the day, other than if one actually is forced to wear this kind of thing day in and day, one notices if one is exhausted after wards.

[jim arrasmith]

Here is mine.To me it just says I was there in the "early time of the ball is rolling good now."

[BenVK]

Gummipolster is officialy my favourite word in the German language!

Here is my question in regards to these caps. Did the fact that a cap printed with sig runes equal a cap made according to the RZM regulations or not? By that I mean, did the RZM's rules that no makers marks were allowed to be attributed to an item, relate to anything marked with runes?
The way I understanding it, if you were undertaken by the RZM to produce garments, you were not allowed to mark your product with any makers mark at all, hence the classic black cap with all the RZM labels but no makers marks except the code on the tag.

I've read nothing about the practice of marking garments with the runes, regardless of an RZM contract or not. Maybe that's why we are seeing in this thread the practice of "bending" the rules for marketing purposes?

[BenVK]

Forgive my ignorance but the sig runes were adopted by the SS before the RZM was established were they not?

[colt45]

they look GREAT! I like them with or withour SS runes

[BenVK]

Does the "Gummipolster" Officers cap have sig runes just out of interest?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I think the cap with the golden runes and such on the lining as we have here, or not, reflects the introduction of the series of so called "Vom RFSS befohlene Ausfuehrung" items in the latter course of 1934, which came about in the wake of the SS freeing itself from the SA as a branch of the NSDAP. The histories of the SS Verwaltungsamt in German indicate as much, especially as concerns the evolving relations of Oswald Pohl's organization and the rest of the SS and the party. But I am not entirely sure of this statement and I ask colleague d'Alquen to correct me. The requirement to mark items with all the RZM nomenclature also eventuated in late 1934 with laws to consolidate Nazi rule, whereby the "protection of party symbols and uniforms" was part of the construction of the totalitarian state in Germany. This law built on an ordinance of late 1933 which had been a decree from Hindenburg, but the formal law of late 1934 was much more encompassing. Further, it seems as if the SS established a special section in the RZM for its uniform needs around the time this kind of marking of caps emerged, the later result of which was the Kleiderkasse SS. It is also true in many early caps that the evidence is plain of their retail through the RZM.

d'Alquen has even earlier caps in his collection made under the aegis of regional sub units of the SS in the era 1932-33, i.e. Gruppen, which corresponded to similar entities in the SA, but at a time when the SS was still a part of the SA.

Hence, the RZM existed well before 30 January 1933, but how the party dictated that regalia was to be marked is unknown to me, if they directed it at all.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Does the "Gummipolster" Officers cap have sig runes just out of interest?

Ask, and you shall receive.....

[Friedrich-Berthold]

In March of 1935 Hitler is reputed to have ordered that party regalia contain no trade marks, a requirement further stated in the production regulations of the RZM published in 1936. But the SS runics in the caps are surely not a private trade mark, but no doubt reflected Himmler's desire for his regalia to underscore the exclusive nature of his organization. He went on in his speeches and writings about the meaning of the daggers, rings, and other hocus pocus suited to fraternal orders so as to underscore how the SS was set apart from the SA and other organizations. The biography by Longerich has a chapter on the cult aspects of the SS in which there are many citations to this effect. You notice, too, that the SS had an extra version of the cap with a silk lining, as well as a silk cap itself, all of which was to affect the appearance of an elite and these items were deliberately described as such in a way that I think is not as expressly done in other branches of the NSDAP.

If you have bought a Mercedes or a Porsche in Germany, then you know how much all the extras cost, and they are listed in incredible detail and expense...and are an object of pride to their owners. I had always thought that these caps had something of the same snobby ethos, which is meant as no snub to Germans, or Mercedes and Porsche. Rather, Heini H. was at pains to use little things of privilege to set people apart. I am sure that my reflection on this is completely out of bounds, but I have had forty three years to do so.

[BenVK]

they look GREAT! I like them with or withour SS runes

I'd like to own a grey one with runes that's for sure!