Adolf Hitler award badge NSDAP gold party pin - odd engraving font

[Br. James]

As for the hand-engraved AH Honorary GPBs, it has been my impression that those badges were presented by Hitler in an ad hoc fashion, without previous planning, as gifts to significant individuals with whom he happened to be meeting. The badges themselves were blank at the time of presentation, and either someone from Hitler's staff (perhaps Brückner or Schaub or Albert Bormann?) would take the badge(s) to be engraved locally, or if the recipient was departing at that time, then he/she was instructed as to how the badge(s) should be engraved when they got back home...hence the uneven lettering, numbering and even the wrong order of initials after date...

I could be wrong, of course!

Br. James

[Bob Hritz]

Here is a 1938 engraved AH presentation pin.

Bob Hritz

[JoeW]

As for the hand-engraved AH Honorary GPBs, it has been my impression that those badges were presented by Hitler in an ad hoc fashion, without previous planning, as gifts to significant individuals with whom he happened to be meeting. The badges themselves were blank at the time of presentation, and either someone from Hitler's staff (perhaps Brückner or Schaub or Albert Bormann?) would take the badge(s) to be engraved locally, or if the recipient was departing at that time, then he/she was instructed as to how the badge(s) should be engraved when they got back home...hence the uneven lettering, numbering and even the wrong order of initials after date...

I could be wrong, of course!

Br. James

Well it certainly sounds like a reasonable explantion, but I have never seen any documentation on such a procedure in the Patzwall/AH GPB files. The documentation I have seen provides evidence of a definite plan to award the badges for services rendered to party and state. To imagine Hitler meeting with an individual and suddenly deciding to give him or her an Ehrenhalber GPB seems a bit unusual. That means that his staff kept a stock of unmarked GPB sets at various locations?

[Br. James]

I agree that it is "a bit unusual," Joe, but I can't think of any other explanation for the existence of AH Honorary GPBs outside of the normal process of being issued according to a list pre-assigned for January 30th of each year. That way Schwarz' office could have ordered the badges prepared according to a schedule and everything would have looked the same...but we know that everything was NOT always the same! It turns out that at least a few of the awarded badges were dated other than on January 30th of each year, which means to me that other considerations could come into play -- considerations such as a chance or un-planned-for meeting taking place and Hitler wanting to do something special for a very special person on such a special occasion. Then, when you add in the fact that some of those badges were hand-engraved, well, that means to me that something very unusual took place there...something that couldn't have been planned for.

We know that a few regular GPBs -- with NSDAP Membership Numbers on their reverses -- are found to have been hand-engraved, too, and we don't really understand why those badges exist, either! I offer no explanation for such badges here...?! But it's a wonderful subject, nonetheless!

Br. James

[der-hase-fee]

But I think there was a single date issue in 1939, wasn't there?

Wasn't that in 1940 ?

[JoeW]

Actually, there was the single date issue in 1939 that I mentioned earlier in another thread as well as two others. In addition, looking through the list there were eight in '38, five in '40, three in '41 and two in '42.

[all1knew]

Here is a 1938 engraved AH presentation pin.

Bob Hritz

do you own this set as well?

http://wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/s...4&postcount=38

William Kramer