Hessen Reserve Officer helmet

b.loree

b.loree

Administrator
Staff member
While commenting on a thread regarding an Ebay Hessen M15 helmet, I had cause to re examine my Hessen Reserve officer helmet (brass fittings). This helmet is totally legit and Hessen officer BUT the spike top unscrews for the trichter. There are only 2 Hessen regts that wore the trighter...JR115 (silver fittings) and JR 117. However as we all know JR 117 has the 1697-1897 bandeau on the wappen. My question is, would a reservist officer of this Regt have worn these bandeau plus reservist cross?? Or can I presume that my Hessen reserve officer is from JR117 because of the removable spike top?
Lacarde pg78 states that in 1914 all of the Hessen reservists and landwehr were put into reserves/landw for either JR118 or JR116.
One last explanation is that the Hessen helmet store(Owned by Sears and Roebuck at the time) just stuck a reserve officer wappen on a helmet with a JR 117 style spike. In fact, would anyone really care whether their spike unscrewed if they were in a non trichter Hessen regt?
Anyway.....I know that most reservists were not allowed to wear the special cyphers of the regular regiments on their shoulder straps even though they were attached to them. Comments???? Brian
 
An unscrewable spike on an officer helmet does not necessarily mean that a Haarbusch was worn. Almost all officer helmets have a removable spike but this was also often for convenience, for instance to more easily transport the hemet in its box...
Bruno
 
Brian,

I agree with Bruno. I'm not so sure it was done for convenience, as a matter of the feature when you bought it. Infantry Regiment, 117 received the bandeau in 1897. Prior to that it was just run-of-the-mill. If the reserve officers served infantry Regiment, 117 and then he could wear anything allotted to 117. The problem always comes with reserve and landwehr officers when you try to determine what organization they are in and what helmet plates they should wear. I have yet to figure this out.

Bruno you need to reregister! The system keeps recording you as a guest!
 
Thanks Bruno and Joe, I like the convenience argument. I know when I ship these things the ability to take the spike off is a big plus. Brian
 
My Fusilier Regt 73 Officer's Pickelhaube (soon to be sold by the way) also has a screw-off spike, and this regt was not entitled. This helmet was given to me by a museum as payment for work I did for them, it was a vet bring-back. And the spike is removable. So I also think that only us collectors are worried about this, it was a non-issue back in the Kasier Zeit.

dbh09.jpg
 
As it turns out you could order it that way. The Neumann catalog offers the unscrewable normal type spike for .75 marks. Specifically targeted at line infantry. To get the sexy screw off model like Chas had you had to up M 2.50. You could get the screw off on any helmet. That was the one advertised for transport. "Koffer-Helm".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top