Royal House Order of Hohenzollern
The House Order of Hohenzollern was donated in three classes by Prince Konstantin von Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as the Princely Hohenzollern House Order on December 5, 1841 , and after the two principalities were transferred to Prussia by King on March 12, 1850 On January 16, 1851, Friedrich Wilhelm IV was elevated to a royal house order with two separate orders (royal Prussian and princely Hohenzollern).
It was not a pure military or war award and, in the form of an eagle, could also be awarded to civilians who had distinguished themselves to the Hohenzollern family .
Foundation, endowment
Article 3 of the statutes of August 23, 1851 states:
"We and our successors in the crown will bestow these Our Royal House Orders to those persons who have rendered outstanding services to the maintenance of the splendor and power of our royal house and who have shown a special devotion to us and our house ... through self-sacrificing and manly behavior in the struggle for the same against external and internal enemies ... "
Order classes
According to the statutes of August 23, 1851 in the version of October 18, 1861, the royal order had two departments with four classes each: the military department of crosses with swords - introduced on February 27, 1864 - and without swords, and the civil department of the Eagle. The ranks of the civil department were:
- with star (introduced October 18, 1861)
- without a star
- with star (introduced October 18, 1861)
- without a star
- Knight
- Owner (introduced March 9, 1861)
According to the statutes of February 10, 1891, the princely order had the following classes:
- Cross of Honor 1st Class
- Honorary Commander Cross
- Cross of Honor 2nd class
- Cross of Honor III. class
- gold medal of honor
- silver medal of merit
The order's inscription was FOR LOYALTY AND MERIT .
On December 18, 1866, two crossed swords were attached through the cross angles of the princely Hohenzollern decoration for war merit.
The Knight's Cross with Swords of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern was de facto the highest Prussian order of bravery for officers up to the rank of captain . In many cases it was viewed as a preliminary stage of the Pour le Mérite and jokingly called "Leutnants-Pour-le-Mérite".
Order decoration
In the eagle division , which was given primarily to scientists , teachers and artists , instead of a cross, a black Prussian eagle with full regalia and the Hohenzollern coat of arms was worn. The head of the eagle is underlaid with a ring in blue with the order motto FROM ROCK TO SEA , which should illustrate the historical journey of the Hohenzollern.
In the department of crosses religious cross is white enamelled with black frame. In the obverse, the medallion shows the black Prussian eagle with the Hohenzollern coat of arms on the chest, which is surrounded by a blue ribbon with the order's motto FROM ROCK TO THE SEA . The medallion in the lapel shows the royal name on a white field, which is surrounded by a blue ribbon with the date JANUARY 18, 1851 . The "Hohenzollern" was in the II. And III. In the 1st class it was worn on a white ribbon with two black stripes on both sides and a narrower black stripe in the middle of the ribbon, in the 1st class on a chain of orders with alternating coat of arms of the Hohenzollern, Reichserbkämmerischen and Burggräflich Nürnberg. The so-called Hohenzollern chain was the insignia of the Grand Commander.
Awards
In times of war the medal was awarded in two classes on the black and white ribbon: the knight's cross exclusively to officers , the “cross of the owners” to non-commissioned officers who had distinguished themselves through extraordinary bravery and thus through their special services to the fatherland . This was indicated by two crossed swords on February 27, 1864.
In the German-Danish War (1864) the Knight's Cross with Swords was awarded eight times, in the German War (1866) 36 times. For the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) the list of medals shows nine awards with swords; three officers received the swords for the cross of knights. Even in the colonial wars, “the Hohenzollern” remained a rare award. In the 1909 ranking, only three colonial officers are listed as bearers of the order. During the First World War , the coveted and later numerous medals were awarded very slowly (Geile). The very important award was presented only 8,291 times. The holder's cross for highly deserved non-commissioned officers, which was awarded only 17 times during the First World War , was an additional reason for paying an honorary salary, which was also recognized in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The complicated system of awards in the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire , which had no medals, provided that no soldier could receive the same award twice for an achievement. An officer who already possessed the Iron Cross First Class was awarded this medal for repeated exceptional performance. He was thus quasi an intermediate stage to the military merit order Pour le Mérite .
After 1918 it was awarded to Germans and foreigners as a house order by the former German Kaiser Wilhelm II in his Doorner exile until around 1936. After that, Hitler's ban on the awarding of former German dynastic medals came into force. After 1936 the "Hohenzollern" was only given to non-German citizens until the death of the ex-emperor in 1941.
Individual evidence
- ^ Message from Dr. Bernhard Wenning, Vienna War Archives (2009)
- ^ Kurt-Gerhard Klietmann : Pour le Mérite and Medal of Bravery . Berlin 1966
- ↑ Ordinance on the payment of honorary wages for bearers of the highest war decorations of the First World War of August 6, 1957.
literature
- Jörg Nimmergut : German medals and decorations until 1945. Volume 1. Anhalt - Hohenzollern. Volume 2. Limburg - Reuss. Central Office for Scientific Order Studies, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-00-001396-2 .
- Willi Geile: The knights of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords in the First World War. (= Statistical elaborations on Germany's phaleristics . Volume IV.) PHV, Offenburg, 1997, ISBN 3-932543-03-3 .
- Louis Schneider : * House Order of Hohenzollern , Berlin: Duker, 1869, digitized
- Richard Lundström, Daniel Krause: Awards of the Princely House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords and the Gold Medal of Honor with Swords 1914–1947 . Constance 2008, ISBN 978-3-937064-12-3 .
