Article about: by Robert H Ja das gute Bayern, for interest my named Standarte 31 Uniform and Visor was getting researched and I get all files over the next some weeks. Incl. with photos from the owner fro
It might be a police cap, I think. I.e. deutsche Polizei...
Such a cap would sour the mood of many internet regalia wizards and head-wear-know-it-alls, because it is not "textbook...."....!! ...and it has colored piping.....!!!?
The distance from Landshut to the RZM retail outlet in the Viscardistrasse was too great, or the latter locale was pulverized by the time this young man sat for his marvelous portrait.
What happened to him and his cap.....and his family?
Thanks so much for the marvelous pictures. These are much better than propaganda pictures we usually see.
Thank you HPL for posting the images and the link to the archive. A marvellous portrait of a time and place.
I am at a loss to explain the "1 Faust" title. The picture dates from 1937 and yet from 1934 to 1939 the only title listed is "4 Faust". Mind you, I have come across pictures of an honour title being worn by a completely different regiment than that which was specified.
From the style of lettering it does appear to be an early title, so it is possible that the regiment received the honorific when it only comprised one sturm and this man retained it. But who knows?
D'alquen
Thank you HPL for posting the images and the link to the archive. A marvellous portrait of a time and place.
I am at a loss to explain the "1 Faust" title. The picture dates from 1937 and yet from 1934 to 1939 the only title listed is "4 Faust". Mind you, I have come across pictures of an honour title being worn by a completely different regiment than that which was specified.
From the style of lettering it does appear to be an early title, so it is possible that the regiment received the honorific when it only comprised one sturm and this man retained it. But who knows?
D'alquen
Thanks for the kind aid. We do not have the whole documentary Ueberlieferung of the Allgemeine SS in archives. Hence, there are a lot of very intriguing gaps, of which this piece of evidence is one fragment. Your theory, Derek, makes a lot of sense to me at least. This figure also seems to be a man of some seniority in the SS, as this Standarte was created in 1926 according to the secondary source I have. Who knows? But we know more because this site attracts wonderful material and powerful minds and civilized personages to help us interpret the conflicted evidence of the past.
I wish I could own both of these black uniforms, surely.
Thanks again. This kind of thing renews my faith in why we labor here against the chance of learning something really interesting and new versus the endless recycling of the "is it fake....?" threads.
Bravo! And this personage extracted his Hunderschaft Nummer on the collar patch, discarded his chin strap and I wonder whether he removed the unit number from his shoulder boards, too? But the collar Paspel is still there, while that of the Kragenpatten is not. Someone can date this image better than can I.
Ein schoenes Bild von Menschenschicksalen...
Postscriptum. And this Eigenmaechtigkeit of removing the chin strap was against the regulations, was it not?
Such also proves that such things as regulations had a limited effectiveness even in such a crack organization as the SSTV on its way to the SS Totenkopfdivision. Maybe this man could not buy the cap with the cloth peak, and this was his attempt to compensate? Who knows and it does not matter, really. A wonderful image. Also, the Kragenpatte seems to be the extra TK, i.e. the one with alu wire. Danke vielmals!
Thanks for the kind aid. We do not have the whole documentary Ueberlieferung of the Allgemeine SS in archives. Hence, there are a lot of very intriguing gaps, of which this piece of evidence is one fragment. Your theory, Derek, makes a lot of sense to me at least. This figure also seems to be a man of some seniority in the SS, as this Standarte was created in 1926 according to the secondary source I have. Who knows? But we know more because this site attracts wonderful material and powerful minds and civilized personages to help us interpret the conflicted evidence of the past.
I wish I could own both of these black uniforms, surely.
Thanks again. This kind of thing renews my faith in why we labor here against the chance of learning something really interesting and new versus the endless recycling of the "is it fake....?" threads.
Thanks. I have been working my way through the images, and it is striking that despite Passau being part of Nazi Germany, you do not see much of it in these images. That is, before the start of the war, there are not a lot of men in party uniform. Rather, there are alot of Catholics, as befits Lower Bavaria then and now, and rather a lot of people in traditional roles in society. Such changes with the war, somewhat. Further, as one who collects black SS uniforms, one can also see that they did not represent a large segment of society in Passau and its environs at all, not that I would expect otherwise. Hence their rarity. There are also a lot of attractive women, too, frankly, or maybe my eye is drawn to such a thing....I guess.
In any case, this is a marvelous source and a corrective to the propaganda images of the regime that get recycled too much in these sites. What is on this Passau site is more indicative of real life in one part of Germany, and, surely a quite lovely one, to be sure. There are a number of Austrians here, too, once the Anschluss takes place.
The very Catholic areas of Bavaria were among the more resistant to inroads of the NSDAP at the time, even though this area was also adjacent to the birth place of national socialism's most well known figure....
It would be interesting to know the biography of the owner of the photo Atelier, as to his background and possible political outlook. Someone more intelligent than I in content analysis and some statistical rendering of these thousands of images could then assess them for us, somehow. But I am just an old fashioned historian who has read a few books on social history.
I know this area somewhat via my relentless commuting between Berlin and Vienna via the Autobahn. I guess know is the wrong word, but the place names are somewhat familiar to me.
For internet pedant keepers of the "textbook," please note the oddity in this picture..... Of course, I have indeed seen other images of black uniforms without cuff titles, though I ask my betters here to offer a regulation or some documentary evidence to account for same. This is a wedding picture, by the way. When one considers the exceptions in many of these portraits to regulations, can such be accounted for by dint of this somewhat out of the way corner of Bavaria...or, if you looked at similar sets of Fotoatelier images of mid-size or little-ish German towns throughout the Reich, would you also see such a frequency of exceptions, variations, violations to the regulations..in such places as Pirmasens, or Thorn, or Wismar?
As usual some very pertinent and thoughfull observations from "FB".
Here is another image from the archive. This older gent and holder of the Gold Party badge appears to wear the earlier pattern jawless cap badge. The cuff badge raute I think is that is a Bandmaster?
I notice too a whistle lanyard which appears to have been a popular addition to the uniform. It seems to vary in placement between the left & right pocket. What were the standing orders regarding this affectation?
Always nice to see a dagger in wear too. On the same subject I will start another thread within the daggers forum as I have discovered some great shots of various daggers being worn and some are the less seen types.
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