quote:
Originally posted by JIM A:
IS THERE ANY BOOK THAT HAS A COMPLETE LISTING OF THE RZM NUMBERS OF THE BLACK HAT MAKERS?
There is the Handbuch d. RZM from 1935 as well as the Mitteilungsblaetter. It contains the names of firms to whom licenses were given. I do not believe it contains what kind of regalia they, in fact, made, other than in a most general sense of the license itself. Once one got a license to make headwear, I imagine one made the headwear warranted by contract or the bespoke requirements of customers (on a small scale...) However, there is no secondary work to my knowledge with this data. And, I sincerely doubt that many souls actually know which firms (in total...) made such caps. I have included here the results of forty years of empirical study, greatly aided by the kindness of others. The search for lists generally leads to a dead end. In any case, the fakers have begun to copy the Zulassungsnummer of the major contractors, in any case. Many caps were made by Wille/Hannover; Wagner/Braunschweig/Hamburg, and A. Mueller in Muenchen. But as one can see here, there were several other makers, and I am sure that there are several more about which I know nothing at all. Derek Chapman can help me here and I must buy the latest Bender book all the same. We look forward to Derek Chapman's book, and Shea is finishing off the work of the late Michael Beaver. The key though, is to be able to recognize a real cap, and the Zulassungsnummer is but one piece of data. I think the mania in the dagger biotope for numbers is all well and good, but one cannot offer such a list until one finds the list the SS itself used or that used by the RZM. The issue here is that the fakes of these have improved drastically, in part because of the Schiffer illustrated works. One has to stay ahead of the boese Menschen. The Gundermann & Kornacker piece is quite rare, and the tag in Kevin's cap is an unikat for me, actually. I should also add that the secondary work upon which many rely provides only partial insights into this material, that is, black SS headwear. For instance, do refer to it in search for just this Magdeburg firm and report back on what you find.
Kevin has found a very nice cap as he so generally does.He has also recently found other SS headwear of great rarity. He just should not spill coca cola on such a thing, though.
