NSDAP Membership book help

[Don Scowen]

I am contemplating buying my first NSDAP membership book.

As I still know very little about these I wondered if you guys would cast you eyes over the description & picture & see if there are any red flags. The only thing that I noticed is that the eagle in the ink stamp is different to others I've see & it has a cloth cover.

Here is the description:

4x5" red cloth hard covers with gold embossed political eagle/swastika on front. Named to a 41-year old Nurnberg woman with photo showing her in the German Red Cross nurse's duty dress tied to page with crisply impressed embossed Nazi Party seal having political eagle/swastika in center and inscription around border "Nationalsoz.Deutsche Arbeitspartei Reichsleitung" (National Socialist Party National Leadership). Obviously this membership book was issued at the highest level of party leadership, very few ever were that we know of. Most commonly these membership books were distributed on the local party level. Photo clearly shows her Third Reich German Red Cross nurse's badge. Pages 8 and 9 show her as having first entered the Nazi Party on '1.Mai 1935', party district of 'Coburg-Echartsberg'. Identification book was issued at party headquarters in Munich on '31.August 1939'. With crisp blue ink stamp showing political eagle/swastika and inscription "Nationalsoz. Deutsche Arbeitspartei Ortsgruppe Coburg-Eckhartsberg, Ortsgruppenleiter". Pages 17 through 23 contain a total of sixty seven 2.30 RM dues stamps (like a postage stamp). Shows that she faithfully paid her party membership dues (note that the right side columns are for "Hilfk.Beitrage", further voluntary contributions, which she did not offer at any time…a wartime nurse's salary was very modest). What's quite remarkable is that she paid her dues right up until March 1945; it's also rather remarkable that her dues were even collected for this long. Most commonly these books are found with dues having only been paid up until mid-1944, the war having disrupted the local party official's monthly visits. All of the these dues stamps are correctly over-printed with the appropriate yearly date with the exception of the three months in 1945; these are printed '1944' and obviously a fresh supply of correctly '1945' dated stamps were unavailable to the local party official, given the havoc and chaos of war's end.

Any comments appreciated,

Cheers
Don

[Don Scowen]

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[Rick Research]

I'm dumbfounded at the level of "expertise" in a dealer who asserts that "very few" of these membership books were issued at "the highest level" when in fact ALL permanent NSDAP photo membership books were!

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...54&postcount=2

Only the Temporary Cards were issued by local Party authorities!

Aside from that, I see no problems whatsoever with the book, though I do wonder what financial premium this "Expert" Dealer is placing on his "...that we know of."

It IS unusual NOT to find the usual extorted "voluntary" additional payments stamps, but I'd say merely as a curiousity and not to add or subtract from financial value.

And the suggestion that Party members ceased paying dues in '44 as they somehow "sensed" the End coming or whatever is pure BLATHER. If, for instance, most of the books that ended up in America came home from GIs with the time to rummage houses at the end of '44... they plucked what had already been captured. People in Berlin etc etc hardly stopped paying dues months before the war ended.

[Erich B.]

book

The book looks fine to me--they all have cloth covers. I don't think it's the most desireable book (unless you're looking for nurse items) but I'm sure it's original. They're relatively common to find, by the way, especially the later issued books like this one.
Erich

[Don Scowen]

Thanks for the info. I imagine that it is over priced at just over $300, however it is the DRK connection that I am interested in as this is one of my areas of collecting. At least there are no obvious red flags that I am missing.

Cheers
Don

[Rick Research]

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