Posted 4 years ago
Militarist
(288 items)
The Internet Has Been Good To Me!
The internet has been good to me! In the last two months I have been able to add three more locally issued German Franco Prussian War service medals to my collection at reasonable prices. The first is a silver medal from Kitzingen, Bavaria. This medal came from a German coin dealer which would not be unexpected. The second medal in bronze was issued by the city of Hamburg, Germany in December 1870 as a Christmas gift for the wounded soldiers in the large military hospitals located in Hamburg. This medal was sold by a coin dealer in the Czech Republic. This location is not much of a surprise since it is a neighboring country of Germany and coin dealers do get around. The third medal in silver was issued by Lichtenfels also in Bavaria. This medal was sold on eBay by someone in Serbia. I don’t know if he is a dealer or just a collector but getting this medal from distant Serbia amazes me. At first I was a bit slow to accept this modern world of computers and credit cards but as a collector I am really getting to like this.
These must be a reference to the Franco-Prussian War. I wear a German police helmet here in St. Maarten/St. Martin when it's hot because it has good flow-thru ventilation. Nobody seems to notice. Guess the French are used to seeing the German helmet on Fr. soil ! LOL ! Hardly anybody here realizes that during the War. we were owned by Germany by conquest and the Fr. side under Vichy.
At the end of the Franco Prussian war only the Germany states (in Germany) issued war service medals. 25 years later many localities gave medals to their veterans usually on the 25th anniversary of the battle of Sedan. These medals were only given to actual veterans as indicated in the inscriptions so as not to confuse them with the common patriotic medals that were widely distributed.