general militarpasse questions

[J. Adam]

Firstly, were militarpasses only issued to NCO's? I have one for a vizefeldwebel but I haven't seen many higher.
Secondly, I've noticed that the entries in the books make reference to events that occured some time prior to the actual entry (a number of years in some cases). Why is there such a discrepency between the two?
Thanks in advance

[l-marcin]

Good question- "my" highest rank is also a Vizefeldwebel, I have 7 documents (Militaerpass,Soldbuch). Let`s wait for Forsch.

[Chip M]

J.,

I think Militärpaß were issued to everyone. For instance, I have one that belonged to a young man, born in 1900, who was inducted in mid-June of 1918. He was assigned to the Ersatz Abt. of the II.Batl. of Jäger Rgt.3, but only made it as far as the Feldrekrutendepot of the 200.Division by the time the war ended. He never had any rank advancement.

Chip

[Daniel Murphy]

I have seen these id'd to officers and recently saw one for a general. Everyone had to have documentation on them as to who they were and authorization to wear the decorations they wore. The ones to officers are very rare. As far as later entries for earlier events, it is my understanding that upon mobilization or possibly soon after, new documents were issued which would have contained all of the old info. I have a bavarian one from a man who was in the class of 1909, but this pass is from 1914. Of course a militar pass was kept by the unit and only given to the soldier during leave or when demobilized. I believe the rules would be the same for a soldbuch which is carried at all times by the individual.
Dan Murphy

[Frosch]

A Militärpass, or equivalent such as an Ersatz-Reservepass, etc., was issued for every soldier inducted into the military, including men who were registered, but not mustered due to their occupation or health.

Further documents such as the Überweisungsnationale were also kept as a more permanent record of a man's service, much like the Wehrstammbuch of the Third Reich. Kriegsstammrollen for NCOs and enlisted men and Kriegsranglisten for officers were another form of service record kept at unit level.

Essentially, all of these documents were used to keep track of a man as he progressed through the various levels of service, from service with a regular unit, discharge to the reserve and finally service with the Landwehr 1. Aufgebot and 2. Aufgebot. Some of these additional types of service may not have applied depending on peacetime or wartime circumstances.

The Militärpass was also used to record pre-war periods of reserve service, disabilities and pension entitlements, if relevant, and wartime service, training, promotions, awards, wounds and injuries and battles and engagements.

Discrepancies in entry dates will probably be due to second (Zweitschrift) or third issue documents to replace lost or damaged earlier ones. Sometimes, a few years of front-line service were summarised in just a few lines with remarks on conduct, promotions, awards and the addition of a glued-in list of battles when a soldier transferred out of a unit.

There is an almost infinite number of variations of these documents, including additional sections glued or sewn into single or double books, depending on length of service and the amount of entries added to them. To give just a couple of examples, I have very simple books with only a few entries outlining training, unit transfers, battles, awards and discharge for men that fought throughout the entire war. Other books might contain extensive details of pre-war service, different types of training, courses for NCO and officer candidates, time spent in hospitals and with convalescent units, battles and fitness reviews with up to 20 pages added throughout.

Documents to officers tend to be hard to find, while Militärpässe to other ranks are fairly common. To obtain a good picture of a soldier's service, you really need all of his paperwork, including the Soldbuch, Militärpass and all award documents, provided they actually existed. Some states did not issue award documents at all and a simple entry in the Militärpass was sometimes all a soldier had to prove his entitlement to an award. That being said, not all awards were entered into a man's Militärpass. I have a few complete groups to men, some of whose awards are only evidenced by the specific award documents, as the Soldbuch and Militärpass contain no reference to them whatever. In these cases, the awards often seem to be have been granted some time after the men were invalided out of front line service and recovering in hospital or with Ersatz units at unit depots.

Despite such anomalies and omissions, Militärpässe are still a fascinating way to study the service career of typical soldiers and researching their biographies is a good way to learn about the events and consequences of the 1914-18 period that are often ignored by many collectors.

/David

[Chip M]

David,

Thanks for all of the interesting information. These personal documents are fascinating and seem to be included in just about every imperial collection. Wouldn't it be great if there was a huge data base where one could go to match up other documents from the same man?

Over the years I have seen many groups sold piecemeal and scattered to the four winds. It would be nice to reunite them. As a beginning colletor, I bought single documents from groups, when I did not have the money to buy the group. As we all have seen over our careers, if the seller is willing to split groups, there is sometimes little that can be done to keep all of the pieces together.

Thanks again for the lesson.

Chip

[Frosch]

Chip,

I know what you mean about split groups and trying to re-unite them.

My documents collection includes some 350 Militärpässe (I lost count), some of which are together with their Soldbücher. I also have a lot of fragmented groups and single documents.

As I recently discovered that I have three award documents to the same man, originally obtained separately, and only discovered that they matched by chance, I have decided to adopt a more systematic approach than index cards and am working out how to create a database of what I have, and don't have. I hope to use the system to "find" what I have and what is missing and to reference the documents to various regimental and campaign histories. I also suspect Chris and I each have some documents that match each other, but only a database will be able to find them. It will also give me a better chance of identifying missing parts of groups when they appear on eBay and at dealer sites.

Like a few other people, I also sometimes pay too much just to keep a group together.

I have heard about a number of database projects, but until now everyone seems to be keeping theirs to themselves. My requests to contribute to existing projects have been ignored so far. At the risk of duplicating work that has already been done elsewhere, I am going to establish my own system and might make the information available online some time in the future. With the 100th anniversary of the Great War approaching in 2014, I might even get something presentable done by then.

If nothing else, I hope the system will be a good research tool to track units and award practices and act as a searchable index of people, places, events and reference books. I might even find a few more matching documents and re-unite some fragmented groups.

/David

[J. Adam]

Thank you so much. That was extremely informative.

[Bob Lembke]

Militaer=Paesse

Guys;

Just noticed this extremely interesting discussion.

I have about 50 Paesse. I found my father's several years ago, and taught myself (sort of) to read German and Suetterlin to be able to translate it and also the family mail of the period. I do not collect them actively, but pick up one or two every now and then, as I am focusing on writing something. For many of them I have written a summary of about 800 words (obviously different Paesse deserve different amounts of attention).

I find them all fascinating, and don't think I have ever read one without learing something else about the Imperial Army, even if the guy was an invalid, never got into combat, etc.

I am writing about storm troops, and I have two Paesse for the Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) (my father's, and a copy a kind e-buddy gave me) and a copy of a Pass of a machine-gunner from the Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr) from another saintly person (Memory serving, I sent him a copy of my father's, and he liked it so much that he sent me five copies of excellent ones, including Rohr.) I think I have discovered important facts about these important units from each of these Paesse. I want to stress the value of these documents for historical research.

I have a German e-friend who is a major collector of military histories, and his dream is to build a database of as many WW I German soldiers as possible. I know that this seems nuts at first blush. For much of my working life I worked with large computer databases, sometimes millions of records each, and used them or directed their use for planning research. So I sketched out both a design of such a database and an organizational scheme that would allow many people to insert contributions of data from manty sorts of sources while hopefully keeping out a lot of junk or even malicious data contributions.

I know that David has made a start with his own collection, and has generously made it available to others. A data-base of Paesse, for several reasons, would be easier to design, and also would also be already useful when still a lot smaller, than a data-base of Landsern. Covering other sorts of documents, like a man's Soldbuch and award documents, would not be that complicated.

A project like this would require a fair amount of work, some of it quite skilled. (I think that it should be based on what is known as a "relational data-base", not simply on a spread sheet, although it might be possible to switch to the former from a data-base originally based on a spread sheet.) Having run my mouth, I could not, now, put more than a bit of effort into it now. This sort of process probably needs a self-sacrificing saint of some sort. I have long felt that it would be nice to have some sort of organization or working group focused on these documents. Nothing fancy, but possibly something.

Additionally, I want to observe that collectors (like all people) are an odd lot, and every one has their own motives and interests. A data-base and the supporting process or group should be designed to meet the needs of different sorts of collectors. There is an important nest of questions in the area of who can access such a data-base, and what, if anything, is the person who provides data on his Paesse and other documents then expected to be expected to do if another participant approaches him with some sort of request.

I hope that David, who has been very kind and generous to us collectively, and also to some of us (including myself) individually, does not think that I am trying to dump a giant project in his lap.

Any comments or additional ideas?

Bob Lembke

[Carson_Kitt]

Not exactly a Militarpass, but I do have a Solduch and Cover for Oberleutnant Rudolf Frisch of the 10th Bavarian Pionier Kompanie.

It is very worn and it is almost impossible for me to translate the text.

Best,

Vincent