Types Materials for SS Visor Hats

**BenVK** · 12-06-2008, 01:13 AM

by Friedrich-Berthold

The gap you see is not infrequent. Moreover, sometimes the peak is dislodged, because the leather peak eats the threads that secure it to the Muetzenband and the sweat band, too. Per saldo: I do not think the gap necessarily reveals it to be a re-made cap.

Agreed but worthy of some further investigation to be sure. I can't be certain of course without having it in hand but there is something about that cap that gives me cause for concern. The gap in the peak and the way it's very angled reminds me of my early attempts of peak repair work where I didn't get it quite right and had to start again, A very labourious task I can assure you.

**Espenlaub Militaria** · 12-06-2008 01:13 AM

We also buy and trade your items and full collections!

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-06-2008, 02:37 AM

by BenVK

Agreed but worthy of some further investigation to be sure. I can't be certain of course without having it in hand but there is something about that cap that gives me cause for concern. The gap in the peak and the way it's very angled reminds me of my early attempts of peak repair work where I didn't get it quite right and had to start again, A very labourious task I can assure you.

You have to line up the thing with the notch in the center of the peak with the center line of the band and the cap cover. I am not sure if the leather peaks have this little notch in the center, but the vulcan fiber ones do, and it is the key to getting the thing on centered.

I say this because a friend of mine is expert in cap repair, too, and like you and all classical artisans, learned the craft for reverse engineering existing piece. I watch him work and he has fixed some of my pieces where the sweat band has come loose or the peak is sagging.

It may well be that the peak fell off the cap in the auction and someone fixed it. Many young collectors consider this original sin, which I find really odd. Seventy years is a long time. Even with repairs, the piece is attractive. All cavalry caps have a pleasing look to them and I am always taken with this Waffenfarbe. I had a nice Holters army officers cap for cavalry, which I sold through Shea. It was a very rare cap.

As I say, the first time I saw the great Wolfe at a show hereabouts, he had ten or more of these Feldmuetzen alte Art. I had never seen so many before. I owned an army Infantry one in 1972 with a very Lacklederschirm that I got at the Kleinau or Winiarski auction in Germany.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-06-2008, 02:49 AM

[QUOTE=d'alquen;23759]Here, I have found it. The implications of the order are interesting. As I work on my never to be finished, never to be published, study of SS hats I have not been able to able to find the motive for this type of directive.
As price and economics can hardly have been an issue here three possiblities suggest themselves.
One. The WVHA under Pohl was propelled by a desire for modernism in the production processes of SS and related industries. Thus, old-fashioned lacquered leather could have been forced aside in favour of vulcanfibre.
Two. Some of Himmler's directives were purely commercial. The legal requirement for a bicycle lamp that was patented and made by an SS concern is another example. I am sure that in some recess of the RZM contracts were bought and sold as they have been since commerce came into being.
Three. Pure fashion. Aluminium and plastic were the new currency of much design at the time. Leather was perhaps symbolic of military eras of the past and did not fit with the new political soldiery of the SS.
I'm sure there are other and equally valid possibilities. [end quote]

Thanks for your document and the essay. Might I add another factor: the economic policy of the regime to conserve raw materials and hard currency because of the mobilization in wake of the 4 year plan. It seems to me that the leather peaks also vanish from the NSDAP caps around 1937/8, i.e. in the wake of the introduction of the Four Year Plan, with its renewed emphasis on raw materials derived from chemistry as well as autarkic sources within the German sphere of influence. Cotton, for instance, had to be imported against hard currency, which was in critical short supply, and hence there was the emphasis on deutsche Werkstoffe, i.e. Ersatz material of which Vulcanfiber from an older material from the turn of the century, was it not? Flax and linen were substituted for cotton, as was deutsche Zellwolle. The literature of the time on economics and politics goes into these requirements in vivid detail as accomplishments of the regime to free the German people of the Anglo-Saxon ('globalized') economy with its inherent unfairness to Germany.

I can imagine that leather was needed elsewhere in the clothing economy and hence seen as a luxury in headwear.

But my Canadian colleague's theories are valid, too, and we mourn the lack of his book which would put all others completely to shame.

Please write your book and we will help you.

As to the commercial dimension of the SS, this topic is endlessly interesting and I have quoted ad naseum the secondary literature on this score, most of it in German. Himmler was the real smash and grab business man extraordinaire

Thank you for the contribution. I did not post the images of your leather peaked kepi or the peaked cap that is ex Mollo collection, since I do not want to violate proprieties.

Happy Tuche und Stoffe

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-06-2008, 05:17 AM

as the theme has lurched into Lacklederschirme, here is an image of a certain SS officer tossed my way by the fairies in the internet. Notice caps in post # 57 above.

**Friedrich-Berthold** · 12-06-2008, 05:36 AM

I have been looking at my volume of the Vierjahresplan, Zeitschrift fuer.... from the year 1937 and there is constant talk about Deutsche Werkstoffe, to include good old vulcanfiber, which was made from wood and chemicals.

I do not have a scan of this periodical and cannot find one easily. My electric camera gave up the ghost and I do not have a scanner.

There are also a lot of articles about the role of the clothing industry in the 4 Year Plan along the lines I indicated above.

But colleague D's point on modernity, aluminum, and Oswald Pohl are all interesting. This literature on the SS economic enterprises to which I refer goes deeply into Pohl's biography, in fact. An older work on this score is the document for the defense written by Pohl and his WVHA colleagues when they were put on trial in Nuremberg. The thing has been reprinted and gives an excellent break down of the SS firms and enterprises, of which the Kleiderkasse SS and TexLed are known to us all.

Happy Tuche und Stoffe...sowie deutsche Werkstoffe..