Help With a Couple Of Ribbon Bars

[Chris Taylor]

Hello All,
I picked up these riboon bars a little while ago & needed a little help identifing a couple of the ribbons.

The first is a nice 9 place Polizei bar.
It has Polizei long service, looks to be gold for 25 years.

It's also interesting in that it has both 2nd & 3rd place KVK ribbons.

Does any one know the signifigance of the Silver Bar on the Austria Hungary bravery medal?
Is this for a higher ward, or just an additional citation?

I'm also having trouble identifing the last ribbon. Appears to be white with a thin pinkish red stripe on either side.


Here's the other one.
It's a 7 place bar, also with WW1 service, EK2.

This one is nice because of the Civilian 50 Year Long Service Award.

The ribbon on the end is a Hungarian Service award that has all the green faded on the front.

Does anyone know what the solid red ribbon with device is? I'm having trouble with ID on this one as well.



Thanks in adance for the help.

Regards,
Chris

[Rick Research]

Sorry-- no images, just the red traffic "Ø" signs!

[Chris Taylor]

Sorry about that Rick, still trying to figure out how to upload images on this site.

Hoes this-




Heres the 2nd one....

[Rick Research]

Interesting ribbon bars!

The first one has a WW2 KVK2X, then a WW2 KVM-- quite unusual but not unheard of, then the two "war ribbons" Austria-Hungary used for ALL their bravery awards (more than two dozen of them). The absence of swords on them suggests that both were for bravery medals. The QUITE NICE plain bar indicates a second award of the same decoration: those two are probably for a Small Silver Bravery Medal and a Bronze Bravery Medal With 2nd Award Bar--though could also be a Large Silver and Small Silver with Bar. Followed by German WW1 Hindenburg Cross X, Polizei 25, an Austro-Hungarian military long service award (so an ex-WW1 Austrian NCO) and finally the Hungarian 1928 WWI Commemorative Medal for Combatants. That's the same ribbon as is in last place on your other bar, just as is common with its bluish green horizontal stripes faded out. Is that a sew-on style ribbon bar?

The second bar has a problem:

1913 EK2, Schwarzburg House Order with Swords, Saxe-Weimar Order of the White Falcon with Swords (so you've got a Thuringian officer's bar so far), Honor Cross X, then what was probably supposed to be a "normal" 1938 25 years civil service cross, but whoever made the bar (and the wearer! ) apparently didn't notice the microscopic "50", and finally the Hungarian WWI CM again.

The Schwarzburg and Saxe-Weimar combination is definitely XIth Army Corps, 38th Infantry Division, and suggests a wartime Leutnant or Leutnant der Reserve in one of these infantry regiments: 71st, 94th, 95th, or 96th.

Since this is the type with individual tab back mounts, you can tell from the reverse if anything's been monkeyed with by checking for scratches around where individual ribbons may have been pried off and put back on.

If none, you're OK. Those things are so flimsy, monkeying with them more than once almost always snaps the tabs off: kind of a "fail safe" for us.

I'll copy this over to Imperial because of the WW1 ribbons.

[Mark S.]

using the 25 and 40 years devices as a point of reference, wouldnt the 50 have been in gold and silver (like its full size version), making it obvious as a 50 year?

I have never seen one before, I dont know.

[Chris Taylor]

Rick-Thanks for info & education on these two.
I was having a hell of a time trying to figure them out.

No #1 is not a sew on, but I wondered about this too.
The ribbons are wrapped around that cardboard(for lack of the correct term) type material as is in a Kreigsmarine example I have & that I've seen used in other sewn on boards.

Maybe the Polizei officer (assuming it was an officier) changed his mind & opted out of having it permanently attached, figuring he was going to add many more citations & decorations.

I find #2 even more interesting now that I did before!

The tabs on the back look to be un-messed with.
None of the scratching encountered when people swap them out to upgrade.

Plus I picked these up from a dealer I've always found to be fair & honest, so that helps out alot with the piece of mind.

Here's a scan of the back so you can get a bette look at them for yourself...



Also, can you tell me anymore about the Saxe-Weimar Order of the White Falcon with Swords.
Sounds like a very interesting award.

[Chris Taylor]

Mark- I woundered the same thing, but this is the first one of these devices I've come across too.
If there ever was any silver on the cross, it's long gone now.

When I look through my loop though, I can see traces of gold all around the "50" on the top arm.

So, maybe these were all gold after all?

[Rick Research]

I thought we'd had some White Falcons posted over in Imperial, but I guess not on a search. You could post there asking for pix. I know Stogie-Rick had a Knight 1st with Swords a while back and someone else may have scans on medal bars.

For some of these civil service cross devices, see the closeups in the Devices Galleries at the Ribbon Bar Article on the other half of our website:

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/ribbons/index.htm

I've got to say that of all the "dirty chocolate" ones like yours I've seen, they've been 25s that the silver finish has evaporated down to base metal from. So perhaps the device slipped into the "25s" finish bath unnoticed. There isn't really that much gold on such a tiny device, anyway.

Here's a "50" from Stogie-Rick's collection at the standardized x500% waiting for the next update to The Ribbon bar Article:

[Chris Taylor]

Thanks again Rick, will post over in Imperial section about White Falcons.

I refer to your Ribbon Article all the time, and find it a huge help, as reference books on this subject seem to be few & far between.

The one thing I notice about my device is the detail, even down to the cutouts between the cross & the wreath.
Upon close inspection under jewlers loop, it looks as though there may have been silver on the cross, with gold on the "50" & wreath, only all of the silver has faded.

I'm sure it was quite striking when it still had it's silver.

[Daniel Krause]

Interesting bars, but with the 2nd one I have a small problem.
Should´nt the swords on the White falcon be silver ones for a knight 2nd class and not golden ones for a 1st class?

2 wrong devices on one bar might really be a sloppy outfitter...or somebody with lesser knowledge put it together.

Best regards

Daniel

[Rick Research]

All the swords match and all appear to have been gold (though perhaps the finish is gone off all of them), including the silver Hungarian medal's. Since the shop assistant put on a 50 instead of a 25...

[Rick Research]

HERE'S a White Falcon, thanks to Dave!

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...threadid=27248

[Chris Taylor]

Ahhh.... So that's what it looks like.

Nice looking one.

Thanks Rick.

[Rolf D.]

50 Years

Could it be that the person who put the ribbon bar together scratched off the gold and silver because he needed one of the lesser years because he had run out of the 25 or 40 year devices? Just a thought.