German WWII Identified Medal Grouping & Document Set, RKT Signatures
This item is listed for historical interest only. It was listed on our site previously but has been sold and is no longer available for purchase.
Sold for: $1100.00

Original era manufacture.This pillow and medals were listed previously on our site as beingpurchsed by Terri and Iat a small Germanflohmarktnear Ludwigshafen (Bad Dirkheim if I remember correctly)around 1999-2000.We stated "that all of the medals and insignia shown were attached to the pillow at time and have remained undisturbed since" which is so. Upon it's arrival here in the States it waspurchased by a local collector who kept it until his passing when it was then sold back to us, again this is so. What I didn'tmention is at the time of our most recent purchase of this collection, an assortment of award documents, promotion certificates and POW release documents were also purchased. It was mentioned to usthat the medals and documents were sold together to the collectorback in the day. I didn't remember that, and wasn't sure thathis family rememberedthe details of the original sale either. Since German medals are generally not named and merely stating something is a set, when it's so easy to"marry" unnamed items together, we chose to sellthe medals and the documents separately.This morning I began to process the document setand was doing a bit of online research as several of the documents were unit stamped to the 197th Infantry Division, with an elaborate signature on the two EK documents. Seems that ID 197 was commanded for a time by General Hermann Meyer-Rabinger, a holder of the Knights Cross andwhose signature appears so boldly written on the bottom of the certificates. While researching the General,aprofile appeared on the 197th Division which showedthree little triangles as being one of the unit emblems used by this division. On the pillow is an enameled disc stickpindisplaying the samethree triangles emblem. We have documents for the EK1, EkII and Westwall Medals. Also three promotion certificates, Feldwebel 1937, Oberfeldwebel 1940 and Stabsfeldwebel 1941. His POW certificate ofdischarge in 1948 shows his rank as Ltn.Heer (Leutnant), and his 1957 dated Bundesarhiv document also shows him as an officer. While thecoincidence of the triangle symbol may seem thin evidence, I honestly feel the family was correct in their recollection that the medals and documents were originally a set, I had just forgotten. Happy I did a little digging around this morning.