History of fire helmets
Fire helmets were in the early days of professional and volunteer firefighters uniform not only an important head protection, but also an often splendid part. In the last few decades the helmets, mostly made according to military models, have turned into a specially designed and unadorned headgear that is tailored to its purpose, the greatest possible protection of the wearer, and which has developed differently in different countries.
symbolism
The history of fire helmets also includes the symbols with which the early fire helmets were decorated and which are related to fire and thus also to the fire department. This symbolism was dependent on the respective cultures.
- Oak: The oak was in the romantic era for unshakable strength. Oak leaves were said to have the ability to banish lions.
- Linden tree: The linden tree was assigned powers that could ward off lightning . It was also a symbol of the local jurisdiction and the village community. In the Slavic countries the linden ("Lípa") was a sacred tree.
- Laurel: According to legend, the laurel tree was the only one of all trees cultivated by man to be struck by lightning. In the case of burnt victims , the crackling of the burning laurel branches was a good omen . In allegorical depictions it is the goddess of victory Nike who crowns the victorious with a laurel wreath.
- Leo: Like the eagle, the lion is a symbol of animal power and both were said to have the ability to look into the sun without blinking.
- Salamander: Popular belief and symbolism see the salamander as an elemental being that lives in the element of fire, so that it is animated and protected.
- Aquatic beings: The aquatic beings , mostly represented in female form, symbolize the life of the wet element and do not represent demons , but rather guardians of the water appointed by God. They are the opponents of the element fire.
Functional
Combs or spiders are used to make it easier to break parts falling from fire or a door hit by a headbutt. Helmets are sometimes made glossy to better reflect thermal radiation and search light. Retroreflective strips and fluorescent afterglow serve for better visibility in search light or in complete darkness. A visor must be foldable if it is dirty or burnt and becomes opaque. Some can be turned up inside the helmet shell. A typical gold-colored mirror coating is supposed to selectively block heat radiation by reflection from the face. The visor must leave space for the breathing apparatus (regulator) or a respirator. A neck leather is supposed to prevent particles from falling in and water from running into the neck opening of the clothing. An all-round, downwardly flared brim has a similar function and stiffens the equator of the helmet. The helmet should be comfortable to wear thanks to the padding and strap cage, and should transfer any impact force absorbed to the skull over a large area.
Austria
Vienna
In Austria , the Viennese professional fire brigade, as the oldest professional fire brigade in the world and the largest individual fire brigade in Austria , set the tone for fire fighting equipment and helmets, both during the period of the Danube Monarchy and later .
A decree of July 30, 1771 assigned different colored hat stitches to the councilors of the provincial government of Lower Austria and the staff of the Lower Chamber Office ( Wiener Stadtbauamt , to which the fire brigade was then subordinate) to identify their function.
In 1786 the fire fighting teams of the Viennese professional fire brigade were allowed to wear the Viennese city livery as a uniform . A high black top hat with the city coat of arms served as headgear .
The fire extinguishing patent dated December 31, 1817 assigned white hat stitches to the fire-fighting personnel and the fire commissioners and the councilors of the state government, the city administration, the police commissioners and the commissioners from the magistrate and the sub-chamber office to red and white hat stitches as identification marks.
In order to better protect the firefighters during their operations and to make them distinguishable from other people present at the scene, the Vienna City Council decided on October 21, 1853 to purchase more functional headgear than the top hats previously used. Helmets of the disbanded Municipal Guard were purchased and reworked accordingly.
The more ostentatious helmets for the officers were made of sheet steel and tinplate painted black. The side of the comb was decorated with a salamander and the scales of the scale band of bay leaves were modeled on it.
Exercise masters, fire fighters and firefighters were given helmets made of sheet steel of simpler construction, while coachmen and print men wore black-lacquered oilcloth caps. It was not until 1886 that they received the so-called “coachman's helmet” made of leather, which was similar to the sheet metal helmets and was also painted black. When in 1901 the printing men were taken over by the firefighters, they also received sheet metal helmets.
In order to replace the helmets used by the Viennese professional fire brigade since 1853 with modern headgear, a new type of helmet was developed in cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology and the Carl Weinberger company.
At first this consisted of 0.8 millimeter thick and pressed sheet steel and was reinforced with six star-shaped ribs. One of these ribs ran to the back of the head, two each led down the side of the wearer's head and one rib led to the forehead. This rib was made shorter to make space for the community coat of arms attached there. On the inside, the black (men) or gray (officers) enamelled helmets with a weight of 0.8 kilograms received a felt insert .
Because of the better heat radiation and the lower weight, the helmets made of steel on a trial basis were withdrawn again in 1935 and replaced by helmets made of aluminum . Together with the spider, also made of aluminum and tapering at the top, the helmets offered better protection with a lower weight.
During the National Socialist era, the helmets were colored dark. The fire brigade Vienna, as fire police , received a helmet similar to the Wehrmacht helmet.
This type of helmet, known as the “ Vienna helmet ” or “ spider helmet ”, remained in use by the Viennese professional fire brigade until the 1980s. This type of helmet showed disadvantages, especially when wearing the respirator , because the helmet then sat crooked on the head and could no longer develop its full protective effect.
From 1938 to 1945, the era of the spider helmet was replaced by the Wehrmacht helmet , as the Vienna fire brigade was integrated into the military fire protection police of the German Reich. The Wehrmacht helmets were made from so-called “ Thale steel” with a wall thickness of 0.8 millimeters and a tensile strength of 160 kilograms per square millimeter.
When the Viennese professional fire brigade was looking for a modern fire helmet to replace the Viennese helmet, it did not find what it was looking for from Austrian suppliers. So she accepted the offer from Dräger . This Gallet F1 helmet was developed by Gallet for the Paris fire brigade and sold by Dräger. For the time being, they were still equipped with steel helmets for the trench warfare of the First World War .
The Gallet F1 is a full shell helmet made of glass fiber reinforced polyamide (PA) with a wall thickness of 2 to 3 millimeters (at the edges up to 5 millimeters) and a weight of 1.2 kilograms. It has integrated foldable protective goggles and a gold-coated folding visor as heat protection. An aluminum Nomex fabric serves as neck protection. It is worn for 10 years, after which the helmet must be taken out of service for safety reasons. Gallet was acquired by MSA in 2002 , so it is now also known as the MSA Gallet F1 .
Federal states
Because of the Austro-Hungarian army helmets only by the dragoons were used was for established after 1867 in large numbers volunteer fire departments not only on what is now Austria, but throughout Cisleithania how the Austrian half was called, no way, used military helmets to acquire their purposes.
This gap in the market soon covered the industry with an ever-expanding range. In 1880, for example, the Vienna-based helmet manufacturer Wm. Knaust produced five different helmet shapes (Austria, Pannonia I and II, Germania, Hungaria), around 1900 the Glaubinger company from Vienna was already offering significantly more helmet shapes (Austro-Hungarian, Upper Austrian, Lower Austrian, Viennese , Prague, Villach, Styrian and Bohemian helmet shapes). The main distinguishing feature of these helmet shapes was the design of the sun and neck umbrellas; they were given their special shape by different combs and fittings, which were also offered in large numbers.
After Austria was annexed to the German Reich, the combs had to be removed from the helmets. Especially with helmets made of leather, this meant a great loss of stability and thus of protection.
When the spider helmet introduced in Vienna was introduced in the other federal states of Austria (before or after the Second World War) is not known, but probably only after the end of the war. During this time, company fire departments often made do with temporary solutions: Wehrmacht helmets with aluminum spiders attached.
From 1989 the Rosenbauer company began, together with the Ulbricht Witwe company from Schwanenstadt ( Upper Austria ), to develop their own new type of helmet, which was to meet the requirements of the Austrian Federal Fire Brigade Association . The development of this Austrian helmet type took around two years.
The regional fire brigade associations of Upper Austria, Tyrol and Vorarlberg recommended the purchase of the Rosenbauer “ Heros ” helmet to their fire brigades , while the regional fire brigade association of Carinthia advocated the F 100 KE helmet made by the Schuberth company . In Burgenland , a modified version of the Dräger Gallet F1 used in Vienna , the so-called “ Supra S ”, is used. Since the recommendations of the individual state fire brigade associations were sometimes made too late and the individual local fire brigades are responsible for the purchase themselves, there is no longer a uniform helmet type in the federal states.
The “ Vienna helmet ” is only worn by fire brigades on festive occasions such as funerals or parades. They were members of the Vienna City Hall Station as a guard of honor during the lying in state of ex-mayor Leopold Gratz in City Hall supported by Vienna.
Germany
In the German Empire , the fire helmet was very similar to the pickel hood of the Prussian Army. It was mostly made of the same material (earlier leather , later brass ), but instead of a tip it had an attached comb. As a result, it was subject to ongoing design changes.
From 1933 the fire helmet was adapted to the helmet used in the Wehrmacht . With only minor changes, this shape of helmet has been kept to this day, as it has proven to be robust and reliable. In the meantime, however, there are different forms.
The material design changed from the original multi-part sheet steel to one-part sheet metal to aluminum alloys and plastics ( glass fiber reinforced plastic , duroplastic ). The color scheme varied from the original black after the Second World War to red and finally to the luminescent coating in yellow-green that is customary today with all-round reflective strips.
The design of fire helmets was standardized in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956 with a preliminary standard and regulated in the DIN 14940 standard sheet since 1964, until this standard was replaced by DIN EN 443 in 1997. In 2015, with the standards DIN EN 16471 - "Helmets for forest and wildfire fighting" and DIN EN 16473 "Helmets for technical rescue", two more were added that deal with special requirements in the fire service. Although the helmet is called "fire helmet" in this standard and in parlance, it is also used by other emergency organizations.
The first fire helmet of the GDR was a helmet made of thermosetting phenolic resin- cotton plastic which is very similar to the vulcanized fiber helmets of the early 1930s. The manufacturer was the Robert Lubstein company in Berlin, which later operated as the state-owned company (VEB) Perfect. This helmet was worn in this form from 1950 to 1955 and was then replaced by the thermoset helmet. This was produced between 1955 and 1962 by the manufacturer Robert Lubstein or VEB Perfect. The following silver helmet was a consistent further development of the fire helmets of the GDR. The helmet made of glass fiber reinforced polyester (GRP) was manufactured from the end of 1962 according to TGL 121-940.01 and was worn until the end of the GDR. This technical standard has regulated the manufacture of GDR fire helmets since 1962.
France
In the early 80s of the 20th century, the militarily organized fire brigade in Paris still wore the Adrian helmets , which had actually been developed for the trench warfare of the First World War and which have changed little since then. The Dräger Gallet F1 helmet was designed as a replacement in 1993 and has since found its way into numerous fire departments in Austria and Germany in different versions.
Norway
As a result of the introduction of the Wehrmacht helmet to the Viennese professional fire brigade following the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, the Carl Weinberger company - inventor and producer of the spider helmet - sold the plans and manufacturing tools that had become useless and worthless to Norway . The helmet produced there was riveted to a comb instead of the spider-like reinforcement. This variant of the Viennese helmet was also sold to Denmark and used until the 1970s.
literature
- Manfred Mischinger: The Austrian fire helmets - from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to today . Adjutum Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-200-00574-2 .
- Ludwig Baer: From metal helmets to synthetic helmets - the history of the development of the German and Austrian fire helmet . Neu-Anspach, 1999, ISBN 3-9803864-2-2 .
- CTIF : Development of head protection for firefighters , proceedings for the 16th conference of the International Working Group on Fire Brigade and Fire Protection History in the CTIF from September 3rd to 5th, 2008 in Mysłowice , online
Web links
- Fire helmets from all over the world - feuerwehrgeschichte.de
- Fire helmet museum in Gais (South Tyrol)
- Technical development of the Vienna fire brigade in the 20th century
- Historic helmets of the voluntary fire brigade of the city of Mödling
- Fire helmets from yesterday and tomorrow, from Germany and all over the world - derfeuerwehrhelm.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab M. Mischinger: The Austrian fire helmets - from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to the present day
- ^ Funeral service: Leopold Gratz laid out in Volkshalle wien.orf.at, March 15, 2006, accessed December 4, 2016. - Image
- ↑ The fire helmet - German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990. In: http://www.derfeuerwehrhelm.de . Accessed April 30, 2020 .