The Hartmann Collection

Tony ; If you got the I R 92 officer from S. Wolfe ; or it was passed my Wolfe to someone else , then to ; maybe so .
But all of Hartmann's helmets were or are being sold my S. Wolfe , a few at a time at the S O S .I know the collector
who gets first choice on all of them .
Steve McFarland
 
Hi Steve,

I didn't get it from Wolfe, and I think I might have got the IR92 officer while Walt was still alive, so I guess it wasn't from him now that I think about it.

However, I did get a frosty M18 Stahlhelme via Wolfe that was from Walt's family, so I am privileged to have that from the Hartmann Collection :thumbleft:

KAGGR#1 said:
Tony ; If you got the I R 92 officer from S. Wolfe ; or it was passed my Wolfe to someone else , then to ; maybe so .
But all of Hartmann's helmets were or are being sold my S. Wolfe , a few at a time at the S O S .I know the collector
who gets first choice on all of them .
Steve McFarland
 
ottodog8 / Steve ;
As I might have stated before the Rankin book is what started me into collecting spiked helmets .
The rare officers helmets shown in the photos were Walter Hartmann's . Some of the enlisted helmets and steins
were from the Cliff Foster collection . Cliff was a sergeant stationed in Germany . Cliff was from Memphis , Tennessee . He collected helmets and steins and sent some spin offs back to Memphis to be sold by his friend , Robert M. Ledbetter . Ledbetter was my mentor
and I bought my first Prussian line infantry officers helmet from Ledbetter. I also still have a KAGGR # 1 stein that Cliff sent back .
Steins were $50.00 in those days . I have an oil painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II in his Garde du Corp uniform and eagle top helmet that Cliff bought back to Memphis when he retired from the army. I saw the photos in that book and said to myself ; this is something that I want to collect . I never met Norm Flayderman but I did buy one helmet from him off his old list .
Steve McFarland
 
Tony ;
That is great . No one except Walt's son really knows what all Walt had .
I know that he collected medals and orders . I think the only one that saw those was S. Wolfe .
I know that he had a Luftwaffe yellow Standarte , I saw that on 1 of 2 visits to his place .
Also uniforms .
Steve McFarland
 
The pics of the Foster collection, a few helmets at a time displayed with the steins also had a huge impact on me. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that less is more. I was in a shop called Globe Militaria in New York City, must have been around 1970. They mostly did mail order and ran their business out of a warehouse on West 29th Street. Cavernous room, mostly storage, with a small display area. Their focus was WW2 German, but right in the middle of the open display area was a small multi tiered circular display table with about a dozen or fewer Imperial helmets -Garde du Corps, officer’s helmets with parade busch, just a spectacular display. To a guy used to seeing the occasional Prussian M15 or M95, this was heady stuff. Took my breath away. I think of it often.
Steve
 
Steve ;
How about the Soldier Shop in NYC ? I was never there , but I heard of it and they had a mail out catalog .There was another man who had a shop , I can't remember his name now , but I was told if you asked about a certain spiked helmet , his reply was ; " What , do you think that they grow on trees ? "Did you know John Gray from Staten Island ?
Steve McFarland
 
Steve,
I have some of the old Soldier Shop catalogs but never managed to make it to the store. I lived out on Long Island in those days. Used to take day trips into the city once in a while and roam around. Saw the biggest rat I’ve ever seen lying dead in the gutter in the garment district. Got ejected from Abercrombie and Fitch when my friend tried to start a hovercraft. He did buy (rather had his father buy) a Kar98k high turret sniper rifle sans scope and rings in their gun room for $35. Also got ejected from a very cool gun store I later learned was a CIA front. Got quite an education on 42nd Street. We were just kids. Didn’t know John Gray.

Steve
 
A wonderful collection to be sure and there must be a book full of stories related to it! To me, it's wonderful that these helmets are being carefully preserved.

:D Ron
 
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