Hitler Youth Flak Helpers cap.

[SS Ring Man]

I feel you may have a few weeks on me,but you are right the younger collector will one day be were we are and look back with fondnes to the old day's and say remember when?? You are right about things that we would po-po , tinnes for one come to the frount of the list on this matter.I can remember Eikhorn dagger's as being the end all back in the 70's.And today I.C.2nd class by the LDO numbers "DUH"

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Flak, your cap look fine.

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I feel you may have a few weeks on me,but you are right the younger collector will one day be were we are and look back with fondnes to the old day's and say remember when?? You are right about things that we would po-po , tinnes for one come to the frount of the list on this matter.I can remember Eikhorn dagger's as being the end all back in the 70's.And today I.C.2nd class by the LDO numbers "DUH"

I have about 260 weeks on you, in fact. I do not wish to sound like Einstein to say E=mc2. There was a time with Bannermann's warehouse in the Hudson of the surplus Hardee hats and US cavalry monkey jackets from the 1870s of blessed memory for pennies onthe dollar. We cannot separate this memory from our own enfeebled state. I want as many young people to collect this stuff as possible, to be sure. Nostalgia and memory are powerful things, closely linked with our emotional bond to all of this. My young people around me are nostalgic for the era of my early adulthood. I only wish my blood pressure would go back to where it was then. I was watching Apocalypse Now last night and thought of what an enormously silly movie it was, so go figure.

Taste and trends are what they are, and it did not occur to me that a film like Der Untergang would spark interest in a HJ Flakhelfer cap. The Flakhelfer live in a kind of tradition in Germany, since these people are now at the end of life. Thus, how we perceive the past and how we value it undergoes a steady transformation. Der Untergang is a much better movie than Apocalypse Now. if one wants to make the comparison. Bruno Ganz is a better actor than the great Brando, at least when it comes to military issues and mental failings. One gets the feeling that with Brando the military figure is a peculiar amalgam of the Young Lions, Mutiny on the Bounty and the motor cycle movie whose name I cannot recall. Maybe some Street Car Named Desire, too, for good measure.... I guess.

I wonder, will a HJ Flakhelfer cap cost 15,000 dollars in thirty years, and a black SS officer's cap will cost....what....250,000 dollars? I shall not live to see this day, I suppose. My colleague above suggests these things will lose value. Fortuna will decide for us and we should embrace this fact.

Bring on more caps. All hail young collectors!

Happy collecting. Friedrich Berthold Auerbach

[SS Ring Man]

Well I put back on my shoes and stop counting about our ages.You are about the 5th or 6th person I know of who has been on the old island,2 of them remember buy CW canteens with covers for 50c each.Your right about the prices of things,but like all things to boot it's not always up/up/up/ there is a point.Only a hand full of items will do this.It's all based on who will want this stuff in 20 or 30 years.I feel there is some young blood out there,but not enuff to want to build there life around.Much as yourself and I,but if you are right about the way thing are going I will hang on to my ring

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Thanks for yours. I never went to Bannermann's, but I worked with US civil war collectors in the 1970s, for whom this place was the source of all happiness. I thought the thing vanished before World War II. These people all raided costume houses in San Francisco and in Hollywood, too. They found civil war uniforms; the one in San Francisco had fabulous Imperial German The point: the human quest for the golden age never loses any of its force. I take your point that it is unclear whether a new generation will arise to take up all this stuff. Surely, the whole future of civilization and culture stands at a kind of watershed. Or, it is that men in their fifties and sixties are increasingly irrelevant in a culture of teeny boppers.

I'll tell one thing: the volume of Himmler's speeches that I bought in 1974 for about ten bucks is now worth about 150 dollars in Germany granted how little is the dollar and how my library has appreciated. That is the real kicker. The volume of Himmler's letters is not quite as much, but it is up there, too.

[histclo]

Some questions:

How commonly did the boys wear their uniforms? I have seen photographs of the boys wearing civilian clothes.

Second World War II German air defenses Flak Fliegerabwehrkanone

Did BDM girls also work the guns?

Any idea what proprtion of the Flak gun grews were HJ youth?

Dennis

[mariop]

I want one of these.

[Bob Lyons]

Interesting reading. Bob, my three bucks is in the mail...

Ade I do have to get one of these, a Luftwaffe themed collection does need to have an example I think, you have a very nice example mate, and all the more special because it was the Pope's

Cheers

Bob

[mariop]

Where would I begin to try to get one of these or, any HJ hat?? Thanks in advance.

[Bob Lyons]

Mario,

If your looking for a nice one, Gerard Stetzelberger (The Relic Hunter in the US) has one for sale at US $499, sewn on cloth diamond, RB Numbered and dated 1944, it is item #38 on his headgear list.

Best wishes

Bob