Restoring a Berlin Police Pickelhaube

[SCHUPO]

Gents,

I thought I would post some photographs of a Berlin Police Pickelhaube that I picked up a few years ago. It was dirty, had 100 years of tarnish on the fittings, and was lying un-loved and under-appreciated in a pile of field gear on a dealer table at SOS on the last day. So, I bought it for reasonable money and brought it home thinking I could improve it.

Everybody likes a before and after story like the underappreciated Cinderella becoming the beauty of the ball. My helmet may not exactly be a Cinderella story but I was able to make it more beautiful. When I got the helmet the leather corpus was dirty but not damaged with tight stitching and just a couple of scrapes to the original black finish. The fittings were all solid German silver with no damage outside of being a little misshapen. The chin strap and cockades were missing but these can be found. The liner was intact but this gave rise to a problem. The liner is not the open kind but the closed style with a closed cloth lining attached to the wide leather head band. Therefore, none of the metal fittings could be removed to clean or polish the leather or the fittings. This circumstance gave rise to some thought and ingenuity.

Before photos follow:

 

[SCHUPO]

Knowing that I would have to clean and polish the helmet with the fittings attached I devised a plan. First, I cleaned the leather as best I could with water and a damp rag. I knew that the water would not harm the solid German silver fittings so after cleaning the leather body I let the helmet dry thoroughly for several days. I then took on each piece with brasso metal polish. I don't normally use brasso but it is aggressive enough take on 100 years of tarnish and grunge like that found on this helmet. The brasso worked well and simply required careful application and lots of elbow grease. I could work on areas like the visor trim and spike without too much trouble to worry about getting the polish on the leather. After polishing these metal pieces I took a tooth brush to remove any polish (old or new) that was on the adjacent leather. My problem arose when I tackled cleaning and polishing the front plate. The Berlin Police Wappen is intricate. It also had some original black highlights in the Berlin Polizei motto lettering that I did not want to remove. So, I took a sheet of fairly thick paper and slid it between the leather body and the front plate. I then meticulously polished the Wilhelm cipher and carefully avoided the black paint in the motto inside the ribbon, which was an honorific and not the Bavarian motto as some mistake it for. This was the most difficult part and it took days to accomplish.

At the end of the process the helmet looked better. The leather was cleaner and what remained of the original finish was still there. The metal fittings were all one silver color and the nicotine stain tarnish was gone forever. The original black highlighting of the Berlin Police motto was retained and that actually came out much better than I had dared hope. The Nationale and Prussian cockades were replaced / restored along with the chin strap. And, I am very happy with the way it looks nowadays. Perhaps not a Princess at the ball but no longer a frog.

 

[Sandmann]

Looks like new Thank you for sharing.

 

[k bandow]

A real beauty!

 

[b.loree]

Excellent restoration, well done! I have never seen a helmet liner where there was no access to the actual leather shell to remove fittings.

 

[SCHUPO]

Excellent restoration, well done! I have never seen a helmet liner where there was no access to the actual leather shell to remove fittings.

Thank you all for the kudos.

This helmet is more than a conservation since the missing chin strap and cockades were restored. Almost all rank & file Polizei were either NCOs or Officials (Beamte) so this helmet could have originally had a flat metal chinstrap or a probationary Polizei Anwarter might have had a leather chinstrap. I had these original cockades and chin strap available so this is what wound up on this helmet restoration. The canvas cloth liner is an oddity. The leather sweatband has 9 fingers as usual but no holes for an adjustment cord. It is simply stitched to the cloth liner. This seems to be the original period set-up rather than a rework. However, the thrifty German Polizei are famous for reworking and re-issuing their equipment. Just look at their reworked P.08 pistols with installing, then removing, and re-installing yet another of three different secondary safety systems during the Weimar Republic. I was trained as a Police Armorer during my career so these oddball changes are most interesting to me.

 

[chinstrap]

Thank you all for the kudos.

This helmet is more than a conservation since the missing chin strap and cockades were restored. Almost all rank & file Polizei were either NCOs or Officials (Beamte) so this helmet could have originally had a flat metal chinstrap or a probationary Polizei Anwarter might have had a leather chinstrap. I had these original cockades and chin strap available so this is what wound up on this helmet restoration. The canvas cloth liner is an oddity. The leather sweatband has 9 fingers as usual but no holes for an adjustment cord. It is simply stitched to the cloth liner. This seems to be the original period set-up rather than a rework. However, the thrifty German Polizei are famous for reworking and re-issuing their equipment. Just look at their reworked P.08 pistols with installing, then removing, and re-installing yet another of three different secondary safety systems during the Weimar Republic. I was trained as a Police Armorer during my career so these oddball changes are most interesting to me.

Great work. Nice to see these police helmets.

 

[USMC-EOD]

Good work saving this one!

 

[SCHUPO]

Thank you for the kind words.

I should also say that this specific helmet is the Model 1898 Berlin Police Pickelhaube since it has the ribbon with this motto on the front plate. Notice that it has a low Police Official (Beamte) style of white metal spike with a pearl ring and a ball on the tip. It also has a nicely shaped four armed base that can be seen on some Beamte spikes. The Friedrich Wilhelm IV (FW) Wappen plate bandeau commemorates the 50 years of loyal service of the Berlin Police in 1898. The Berlin Police were classified as a "Special" Police Department and had their own technical armory and procedures separate from most other departments. This helmet was worn from 1898 until 1918. Only the Metro Police in Berlin could wear this plate. Helmets without the motto were worn by Berlin Police in the suburbs or worn prior to 1898. And, Berlin Policemen continued to wear their spike helmets until they were replaced with Tschakos around 1919-1923.