SS RZM Tags

[Friedrich-Berthold]

another example....I am not entirely sure of this one.

Does anyone have something similar?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

a 1935 ish tag in situ from an old image early in this decade.

[vady]

>not entirely sure of this one.<

my good sir: we'd have thought "sure" - like pregnancy - is unqualifiable.

"an end to this pettifoggery!"
-Anon.

now, back to your terrific lesson plan.

another example....I am not entirely sure of this one.

Does anyone have something similar?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

>not entirely sure of this one.<

my good sir: we'd have thought "sure" - like pregnancy - is unqualifiable.

"an end to this pettifoggery!"
-Anon.

now, back to your terrific lesson plan.

Dear Friend, thank you for your intervention. But in all seriousness this variant here puzzles me. Do you wish to say it is a fake? All of our learning and theorizing is just that, of course, it is the sum of the incomplete evidence and our tentative conclusions. This fact makes me insane, since Mr. Saris and others have the documentary evidence in its fullness. I am just guessing, really. And, I make no secret of the fact, too. I spend more time going to and from Europe and less time actually there in archives as I used to, and it frustrates me greatly. There is nothing more I would like than to find the evidence of these things to make a real historical judgment based on more than some old, dusty hats that have somehow endured by accident.

Thanks anyway and happy tags to all far and wide.

[vady]

>fake<

surely not! I don't know enough on this score or most others to gainsay you even a little, fb. your brilliance in these matters precedes AND succeeds you, actually.

just a wee bit of pedantic twitting, one sentient being to another, ye' see. ;--)

your lessons to all and sundry are, certainly, a wond'rous and highly-valued thing.

*btw - that rzm sign is really neat.*

Dear Friend, thank you for your intervention. But in all seriousness this variant here puzzles me. Do you wish to say it is a fake? All of our learning and theorizing is just that, of course, it is the sum of the incomplete evidence and our tentative conclusions. This fact makes me insane, since Mr. Saris and others have the documentary evidence in its fullness. I am just guessing, really. And, I make no secret of the fact, too. I spend more time going to and from Europe and less time actually there in archives as I used to, and it frustrates me greatly. There is nothing more I would like than to find the evidence of these things to make a real historical judgment based on more than some old, dusty hats that have somehow endured by accident.

Thanks anyway and happy tags to all far and wide.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

You are very kind. I do not have the documents that others do, and it irritates me a lot. I have looked at above average number of things and read a lot, especially now that more is at hand in the internet. But as a professional, the whole thing greatly confounds me. Thank you for comments, and I do not know nearly as much as I want. If what I write has some merit for you, I am grateful. I write this as much as to fulfill my own curiosity as anything.

I do know that actual Nazis would be more than mystified that seventy and more years on, we care about the tags in their hats. Since in my younger years, I spent a lot of time in Germany, I can well imagine the state of mind and temper of those who invented these regulations, enforced them, and created these objects.

I was recently in Vienna with the ghosts of many cap makers, regalia craftsmen, et cetera, and they were all quite silent...
But I knew they were there and teasing me all the same. In fact, I passed the place on the Maria Hilferstrasse that was the Auslieferungslager der RZM Wien, at 71 Mariahilferstrasse. I was staying down a few blocks towards the Hofburg.... The walls did not talk, and the world they look out upon today bears little likeness to that of 1939

Happy head wear, tags and enamel signs.

PS. Look at all the hats here.... this is the Ringstrasse in March 1938. Do you assert that these people here are thinking about the tags in their hats on their Nazi heads? If they are not thinking about Hitler and what not, then they are thinking about lunch. Of course, one has to say, too, that the illegal Austrian Nazis in white shirts make a big deal of having neither brown shirt nor cap, either. But being Viennese, they are still thinking about lunch at some level.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The above generalization as to Vienna and lunch is meant as no insult to a city I love, nor to a feature of human existence (luncheon...) which is always more important than foetid woolens.

At this spot (in front of the Wiener Rathaus) while I was in Vienna was the Life Parade, which is something quite different from parading Nazis on the Ringstrasse. Bill Clinton and other luminaries were there, including Katy Perry....

Needless to say, I did not attend the Life Parade or Life Fest or whatever, but maybe someone reading this did so.

The cognitive dissonance between the recent event and the scenes of 1938 are pretty staggering.

But I prefer the Wien of Metternich and the Congress of 1815.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is where you can eat lunch in Vienna, and the man is wearing a black hat of a kind....but surely without any tags. Lots of people do wear black in Vienna as a sign of urban hipness, I guess. This place is on the Mariahilferstrasse, actually. I know I have diverged from RZM tags, but one has to have a sense of adventure. I apologize to those whom I have offended. One does also find a lot of fake SS regalia for sale in Vienna, too, actually; but I get awfully weary of the breast beating about this fake and that fake, and offer this happy image as a corrective to so much ill feeling in a troubled world.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is an RZM SS tag to return to the normal thematique.

It is a black officer's cap of later make from the Fa. A. Mueller, Muenchen...

[Friedrich-Berthold]

For those infuriated by my detour to the Danube, this image of an extraordinary cap with unit and issue marks for an exceptional kind. This is a Lubstein cap apparently issued to a SSTV unit, if the stamps are authentic. I do not know, but my hunch is that they are authentic.