SS-Pin "1" 20. April 1930 - Ben Lieber grouping

[FrenchVolunteer]

Hi,

many thanks for the infos Seiler, you nailed this one perfectly !

See You

Vince

[Seiler]

Hi,

many thanks for the infos Seiler, you nailed this one perfectly !

See You

Vince

Made an error with the Ordering date initialled by Pohl it was in fact April 27th 1937. Sorry an innocent mistake.The pin is a standard Gahr type?style except for the figure 1 engraved to the reverse

[Wim Vangossum]

I have a copy of Himmlers files from Koblenz Archiv where he states clearly he was displeased with No.1 and instructed Berlin to order a "NEW" pin for him to personally present to AH.I also have copies of the second order forms duly approved with the initials of Pohl. (Also came with a bio of Walter Heck containing the argument as "What should be his payment"?) ALL dated 1938. and is a common Gahr pin except for the No.1.Ask Koblenz yourselves!!!!! Seiler.

Regards, Wim

[Max Wünsche]

Ouch!

80,000 + fee's for an original SS Gahr pin albeit with humped up engravings to the reverse...

Some great information provided here.

It blows my mind the leap of faith some people are prepared to take with little to no research on their own part on items such as this. As the saying goes, a fool and his money are soon parted.

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[JoeW]

[QUOTE=HPL2008;8542618]The designer of the "SS" symbol was Walter (or Walther) Heck, a member of the NSDAP and the Allgemeine SS. (He was promoted to Sturmführer on 24 Dec. 1932 and to Obersturmführer on 9 Nov. 1933, the rank he still held in the summer of 1944.) He designed it in 1929.

An unemployed draftsman at the time, Heck did occasional design work for the Hoffstätter company, which was owned by a fellow NSDAP member. One of these jobs was designing the SS-Zivilabzeichen - which was the first usage of the twin Sigrunen -for which he was paid only 2.50 RM by Hoffstätter. In dire financial straits at the time, Heck worked for very small sums of money and routinely waived copyright for his designs.

In 1944, Gauleiter Josef Grohé informed the Reichsführer-SS Himmler about the identity of the symbol's designer and the circumstances of its creation; facts of which Himmler had been completely unaware up until then.

Himmler wrote to Heck that he intended to express his gratitude after the war by giving Heck a family home and garden in a location of his choice, but only if Heck had married and fathered at least two children by then!

This material was discovered by a team of German design students undertaking research for a work on - of all things - the history of the "SS key" on Third Reich-period typewriters..........[QUOTE]

I don't know what the German students supposedly discovered, but the SS-ZA and Heck files have been available and used by US collectors for the past 29 years since Angolia's article on the subject was published in Military Advisor in the summer of 1990.

Actually Heck worked at a fixed salary of RM30,00 plus commissions on his successful designs. Besides the SS-ZA design, he created the designs for the Deutsche Jungvolk, the N.S.Studentenbund and the Hitler Jugend at a commissioni of RM2,50 each. Gauleiter Grohe learned of Heck's sorry financial state from an article about him and his SS-ZA design in the Westdeutscher Beobachter. I have attached an image from his file.

As to the question of Hitler's SS-ZA badge, according to a citation in the Gahr book, the first 650 were prepared for presentation at the 1929 RPT. Whether Hitler received his is unknown. As you wrote, Himmler was dissatisfied with the original Hoffstater badge for Hitler and ordered a replacement from Gahr in April 1937 at a cost of RM1,70 with safety catch. The original pin was kept by Himmler in safe keeping. Perhaps the April order was intended to coincide with AH's birthday.

The entire file is interesting as it includes info on the silver shortage that led to the curtailment of production of the ZA and silver SS-Degen fittings in favor of the TK rings.

[HPL2008]

I don't know what the German students supposedly discovered, but the SS-ZA and Heck files have been available and used by US collectors for the past 29 years since Angolia's article on the subject was published in Military Advisor in the summer of 1990.

The documents in question as reproduced in the "typewriter key" publication were the 16 March 1944 letter by Grohé to Himmler and the 28 July 1944 letter by Himmler to Heck. I must admit I am not familiar with Angolia's article.

Thanks for the file image!

[JoeW]

The documents in question as reproduced in the "typewriter key" publication were the 16 March 1944 letter by Grohé to Himmler and the 28 July 1944 letter by Himmler to Heck. I must admit I am not familiar with Angolia's article.

Thanks for the file image!

Oh, so it was the 1944 info. Angolia's barely one page article was nothing to write home about. It was a brief synopsis of the archive information with some of his own misinformation like the ZA number was the wearer's SS number. But the article revealed that archive info was out there. John Perpera acquired a copy of the entire file and shared it with me in the late 1990s. And from there I made my own research into our archives.


You are most certainly welcome.

[Seiler]

Oh, so it was the 1944 info. Angolia's barely one page article was nothing to write home about. It was a brief synopsis of the archive information with some of his own misinformation like the ZA number was the wearer's SS number. But the article revealed that archive info was out there. John Perpera acquired a copy of the entire file and shared it with me in the late 1990s. And from there I made my own research into our archives.


You are most certainly welcome.

Somwhere in my file on the SSZA I have several pages of Mr Angolias notes on his interpretation of The SSZA which I rcvd from him directly.Must read them again.Been a long time! Have pages on Himmlers irritation at his Office Staff for not handling his mail from Mrs Heck and her whining
about appropriate compensation from him and her lobbying for a suitable reward for his work for the SS? "A small farm from which his reward would be to afford a wife and ultimately SS children.! Seiler

[BenVK]

When did Heck die? does anyone know?

[JK53]

28.2.1987 in Bonn

[BenVK]

Thanks.

So I assume that no one who had anything to do with this pin since 1945 ever thought of contacting either Heck or Karl Diebitsch (1899-1985) to ask them to authenticate it?

[Daniel.S]

So, did any item from that auction actually belong to Hitler?

[Robert H]

last year or maybe longer time ago a German auction house offered a quanitity of AH paintings, all of those where taken from the Police as it was a fraud.
Wonder why § has not taken those items with such high or quite similar amount of money of fraud.

But maybe in the future we will know more. The auctioner maybe doesn´t know but it effects more the consigner on such material.

"what goes around comes around" is very very often true, gladly.

[JoeW]

Somwhere in my file on the SSZA I have several pages of Mr Angolias notes on his interpretation of The SSZA which I rcvd from him directly.Must read them again.Been a long time! Have pages on Himmlers irritation at his Office Staff for not handling his mail from Mrs Heck and her whining
about appropriate compensation from him and her lobbying for a suitable reward for his work for the SS? "A small farm from which his reward would be to afford a wife and ultimately SS children.! Seiler

I would be surprised if his notes revealed anything more than what he included in his very brief "article", as was often the case with his "research". If there was, I don't know why he wouldn't have provided more accurate info in his article. As I recall there was only a brief article in "Der Gauleiter" long ago.