Hi Guys
Hope you don’t mind this addition to Markgraf’s posting of “A Sad M 1860“. It occurred to me that in a race to the bottom sort of theme, you all might enjoy seeing this battered old soldier who recently came into our possession, condition-wise, I think ours is leading in the sad department.
While the helmet appears beaten to within an inch of it’s life, it remains remarkably intact for it’s age and decades of service use and neglected storage. All of the brass fittings share the same color patina and amazingly it’s original, large style Prussian Kokarde has not been lost or removed.
What I find most interesting about this pickelhaube are the measures taken by someone long ago to keep the spike attached to the rest of the helmet. At some point in the past the spike was broken off from it’s base and re-installed using a wooden plug jammed into it’s bottom opening. the plug was then cut across its bottom with a small wooden wedge driven into the cut to keep the plug from passing out the top of the helmet. Two small steel nails were hammered through the ventilation holes in the spike base into the wooden plug, these kept the spike from twisting on the wooden plug. Quite the Fred Flintstone repair wouldn’t you say?
Inside the helmet a diamond shaped piece of thin sheet steel is held in place by the four stirrup nuts which hold the cruciform base in place. Each of these nuts has a rectangular leather washer between the nut and the steel plate. Similar stirrup nuts, and this time circular leather washers, hold the early production 1857 pattern wappen in place. Several other holes can be seen in the body where other wappen had been in place in years past.
Very clear, hand painted unit markings can be seen on the underside of the rear visor. They were nearly invisible to the naked eye until I applied a quick swab of water across their surfaces. On the viewers left side can be seen F.B.12.R., (Fusilier Battalion 12th Regiment) and on the right a date of 1853. (Joe, if these are of any use to you please feel free to add them to your data base).
Lastly, I thought this might be a good opportunity to show a development transition of sorts using three different Prussian enlisted wappens. My apologies for the poor quality photographs, I should have removed the wappens from the helmets for picture taking, but I was a little concerned about applying any extra strain on this old guy.
The helmet on the left I feel represents an early, cut-down pickelhaube, unit marked to the 6th Regiment with the early style wappen with upswept wings and a hand-soldered bandeau to conform to the 1857 regulations (note the Grenadier cypher instead of the FR initials), the center helmet (our old soldier again) retains the early style wappen with upswept wings but this time with a stamped bandeau (by rights this helmet should have a wappen with a Grenadier cypher), the right hand helmet shows what I would call a typical 1860 pattern wappen on a helmet unit marked to the 76th Regiment.
In my opinion there are many detail variations to be seen in issue wappen of this era, these three shown here offer only a small representation. However there is one characteristic they all seem to share, the small web of brass between the top of the eagles legs and the bottom of the wings. The non-pierced solid crowns seem to be typical of enlisted helmets regardless of the era.
Cheers :thumb up:
Larmo
Ron
