Zimmermann or Godet?

[Leroy]

Hi, Trevor,
I tend to agree with you completely. The Zimmermann and Deumer style EK's are truly at opposite ends of the spectrum. The "Deumer-Zimmermann" RK connection in the Ludenscheid museum may be totally off (but certainly a strange mistake to make in that small town) and may not be reliable at all. I just thought I would mention it in the off chance that it might have some relevance to the excellent discussion in this thread.
Regards,
Leroy

[George Stimson]

"What option will you choose, if you see the following pictures?"

There's no "bad maker mark" option....

[streptile]

"What option will you choose, if you see the following pictures?"

There's no "bad maker mark" option....

It's true, that mark is controversial. I believe in it, myself, but I used to feel differently, and I can see both arguments.

[George Stimson]

Trevor

I didn't say that the mark was necessarily bad. I just meant that that would be one explanation for it.

[streptile]

I didn't say that the mark was necessarily bad. I just meant that that would be one explanation for it.

Yes, that is certainly true. It's a possible explanation.

Incidentally, I realize I have gotten the facts and dates of the various permutations, versions and locations of the two Godet companies a bit wrong in my previous posts. I don't know that there is any impact on the suppositions that have been made, by me or others, as a result, but I will post a slightly different timeline of facts here ... just as soon as I'm done walking the dog .

[streptile]

So here, in abbreviated form, is the story of the two Godets, as best I can piece it together from the few archival sources I have at hand. I'm sure this will stand to be corrected, and perhaps George and Dietrich's book will shed some further light on the subject, as I know they have an extensive archive of materials available to them.

• J. Godet & Sohn existed, and was a maker of fine military decorations (among other things), since the 18th C.
  
• In 1928, when J. Godet & Sohn was located at Charlottenstraße 55, in Berlin, their advertisements began carrying the line, "workshop on the premises" ("Werkstatt im Hause").
  
• In 1931, J. Godet & Sohn is listed at Friedrichstraße 173, Berlin, and their workshop is still advertised as on the premises. Simultaneously (the same year), the company at Charlottenstraße 55 address is renamed Gebrüder Godet. The proprietors of this second Godet are Jean and Eugene Godet.
  
• The next year (1932) J. Godet & Sohn moves to Unter den Linden 12, and still advertises their workshop on the premises. For five years these two firms exist side-by-side.
  
• In 1937, J. Godet & Sohn moves to Unter den Linden 53, and no longer advertises having an in-house manufacturing facility. Gebrüder Godet remains at Charlottenstraße.
  
• This state of affairs lasts until at least 1943, when my record finishes.

Various sources have placed the date WILM bought Godet at 1925, 1926, and 1930. Still others doubt this buy-out happened at all.

A few things seem interesting to me to note: The TR-era maker we know as '21', Gebrüder Godet, seems to have been founded in or around 1931, but it shows all signs of having been the natural successor to the "real" Godet, J. Godet & Sohn.

I believe this for a few reasons. Eugene Godet entered the business in 1886, and we can find him proudly listed as the proprietor of Gebrüder Godet in 1931. Also, Eugene Godet was the subject of an article in 1941, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. In this piece, there is (to quote Dietrich Maerz, whose summary of the article is all I have to go on) "no talk of a new owner - quite the contrary - the long history of the company is celebrated."

Thus upon further reflection, I suspect that if WILM bought Godet and used the name, it was actually the J. Godet & Sohn company (that moved from Friedrichstraße to UdL) that they owned, not Gebrüder Godet '21'. Of course, this makes perfect sense: if they bought the company for the famous name, they'd keep the famous name. The old owners, Jean and Eugene Godet (presumably brothers) then founded Gebrüder Godet.

If this is indeed the case, and I think it is, the fact remains that the "Werkstatt im Hause" line can be seen quite clearly to migrate with the company known as J. Godet & Sohn after 1930.

To put it simply: as long as there was only one Godet, they advertised having their own production facilities. When the company split, only the Godet that is not maker 21 advertises having their own facilities (which they do both at Friedrichstraße and at the UdL 12 address). As soon as the split happened, and a second Godet appears, maker "21" (who remained in the old headquarters at Charlottenstraße), conspicuously removed the line "Werkstatt im Hause" from their advertisements, while J. Godet & Sohn continued to run it.

None of this is conclusive, of course. But I think a clarification was in order, since I got some of the details wrong before. If someone corrects me, please be kind and remember I am just a hobbyist working with limited materials and trying to piece together the story .

[Roglebk]

Hard and dead solid testing with Scanning Electron Microscope. Solid data.

Thanks Dietrich, very interesting. Follow up q's:

How many crosses were tested?

Were they both EK's and RK's?

Were CFZ compared to Godet from the same time period?

Were crosses from different time periods used and compared to eachother?

If a couple of early and a couple of very late CFZ EK's and RK's was compared to dito Godet's and the test showed same paint on all the CFZ's and another paint on all the Godet's i would gladly agree to the findings. Talked this over with Statistics guys at work and they can work out a "possibility ratio" if we give 'em the facts from the study.

[Roglebk]

What I am saying is that sometimes ONE guy says (for example) that such and such dies survived and the whole community takes it for real. Scientific work needs solid data or findings supported by relatively high numbers of specimen. Not on what one guy heard from another guy who might have heard it from an SS General .....

Amen to that Dietrich, a good example is imo when we try to separate makers from eachother just by looking at the difference in surface on a hinge.



The "early made unknown maker" cross that started this thread that some call "Early Godet" and Douglas call "UB-frame". Have this cross ever been found maker marked or is the Godet part just guessing as in the other threads?
3 threads about them:
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=387559
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru....php?p=3552810
ttp://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=377545

Douglas> It's about time you let go of the pics proving that the cross got a "Ubergrösse frame" as stated in the other threads.

[Dietrich Maerz]

Only two crosses were tested. But it is a known fact that the paint of Zimmermann and Godet is different. It is visible with bare eyes. On the RK and the EK. Chances that all other EKs of Zimmermann and Godet have the same paint and we got a non-matching pair are - well - zero! The more so when one can clearly see the difference.

I don't know whether the crosses were from the same time period. As far as I know there don't have a date stamp. (That was a joke!). But they were in the big scheme of things (1939 - 1945).

Now let me ask you this:

- how many tests must be performed to be acceptable? 2, 50 , 1000, 10000, ...?
- what is the same time period? 1 day, one week, one month, one year, 5 years ....
- maybe all cores were painted in 1940 and some assembled in 1944?

Would you not need to know how much paint is in a bucket? If "early" are the same as "late" who's to say they didn't use a different paint in the middle?

In other words: the data are not useful to determine who painted what when and with what paint in general. They only confirm the visual difference of the paint and my statement was made in response to the categorial statement "all L/50 are made by C.F. Zimmermann or B.H. Mayer".

[streptile]

As far as I know there don't have a date stamp.

Hi Dietrich,

If you look towards the bottom of the obverse of a cross, on the 6 o'clock arm just above the obverse, lowermost beading rim, there is usually a date. For some reason, most of my crosses seem to have the same date... 1939

[Dietrich Maerz]

[streptile]

A little levity...

[kriztof]

Would you not need to know how much paint is in a bucket? If "early" are the same as "late" who's to say they didn't use a different paint in the middle?

Good point, if I remember correctly, Horst was the painter on Monday-Thursday and Axel Friday-Sunday

I hear that Horst was very protective of his "special bucket" so...

[Roglebk]

Only two crosses were tested. But it is a known fact that the paint of Zimmermann and Godet is different. It is visible with bare eyes. On the RK and the EK. Chances that all other EKs of Zimmermann and Godet have the same paint and we got a non-matching pair are - well - zero! The more so when one can clearly see the difference.

I don't know whether the crosses were from the same time period. As far as I know there don't have a date stamp. (That was a joke!). But they were in the big scheme of things (1939 - 1945).

Now let me ask you this:

- how many tests must be performed to be acceptable? 2, 50 , 1000, 10000, ...?
- what is the same time period? 1 day, one week, one month, one year, 5 years ....
- maybe all cores were painted in 1940 and some assembled in 1944?

Would you not need to know how much paint is in a bucket? If "early" are the same as "late" who's to say they didn't use a different paint in the middle?

In other words: the data are not useful to determine who painted what when and with what paint in general. They only confirm the visual difference of the paint and my statement was made in response to the categorial statement "all L/50 are made by C.F. Zimmermann or B.H. Mayer".

That is EXACTLY my point Dietrich! We are talking about paint on items that were made in 6.5 consecutive years, so many q's that can't be answered now and probably not back then either.

Not trying to break the theory, just playing the "Devils Advocate" so bear with me.

2 were tested and it only proves that these 2 had different paint. That test will not be enough for any statistics to make any conclusion at all.

Have no idea how many tests/items/timeframe needed but will ask them what they think is "lowest needed" to make a fair possibility ratio.

I'm fully aware of the difference between the paint job on some CFZ and Godet, it can clearly be seen with the naked eye. But how many have we seen and how many collectors exept from us really noticed the difference? There might be CFZ's with Godet paint and the opposite too.

Until crosses appear that differ from the norm we found so far i'm totally happy in applying the paint theory. This applies to the hinge theory as well, or any theory about multiple dies.

However, these are just theories, theories that sometimes are stated and backed up with fancy diagrams and core charts easily gets taken for granted by people that reads the threads.

This is very bad imo and can make more damage than good.

[Roglebk]

I suspect that if WILM bought Godet and used the name, it was actually the J. Godet & Sohn company (that moved from Friedrichstraße to UdL) that they owned, not Gebrüder Godet '21'. Of course, this makes perfect sense: if they bought the company for the famous name, they'd keep the famous name. The old owners, Jean and Eugene Godet (presumably brothers) then founded Gebrüder Godet.

This makes perfect sense Trev. If WILM bought Godet & Sohn at all they probably kept the famous name. Please put you new findings in a separate thread with all the facts, this is too important to get lost in a longer thread imo.