NEW BOOKS: THIRD REICH MEDALS AND HONORS

Third Reich Tinnie Collecting - Tinnies is the generic name for small commemorative pins and badges. While the name implies these badges are made of tin, that is not always the case. The designers used all available materials: metal, wood, porcelain, clay, cloth, leather, and paper. Tinnies (Tagungsabzeichen), or Day Badges, commemorating an event have been around for as long as organizers have felt a need to give or sell a remembrance of their event. Today, T-shirts or caps are the most common items issued as souvenirs of an event.

During the Third Reich, these souvenirs were tinnies. The Third Reich brought tinnie design and use to its highest point, issuing them for many and varied events. Each tinnie is a work of art, often designed by a master craftsman. They show the activities of the Third Reich and the history of Germany in a small package. The book has almost 3,100 color pictures of tinnies on 410 pages and translates the text of each tinnie from German into English.

Donation Badges, Pins & Pendants of the Third Reich - When the Nazi regime took control of Germany in 1933, individual charitable organizations conducted their own street collections. These organizations typically gave each contributor a token of thanks for their generosity. Desiring to bring these disparate charitable organizations under State control, the regime designated the Winterhilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes (WHW) as the State charitable organization and started to exert control over these other charitable groups.

The smaller organizations had street collections with the accompanying tokens until about 1936, when they were folded into the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV) (National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization). The larger groups, such as the Deutsche Jugendherbergwerk (DJH) (German Youth Hostels) and Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (DRK) (German Red Cross), were able to hold onto their identity and continued to have collections throughout the war, usually once a year. The other organizations tended to be special interest groups supporting a particular cause or agenda. The book has 1,200 different items in over 1,150 color photos on 316 pages.

Winterhilfswerk Street/House Collections & More – A Collector’s Guide - As dedicated collectors, we worked diligently to assemble our individual collections of the tokens given for donations to the German street and door to door charity drives organized by the Winterhilfswerk (WHW) organization. When we first started collecting WHW pieces, we did it without any reference materials. As time went by, we realized the need for a guide to our collections to know what we had, what we needed, and the relative value of these items.

The references we found available were very informative, but they were naturally written in German. As English speakers with a limited knowledge of the German language, the use of these books often was difficult. As our collections progressed we found many other WHW collectors searching for an English language WHW guidebook. As the years passed and our wish for someone to publish a book in English went unfulfilled, we decided it was up to us to make our own wish come true. The next step to go through, the “If we had it our way we would . . .” process, was simple. The first feature would be color pictures. The second feature would be an index that told us where we could find a particular pin or set of pins without having to thumb through lots of pages. The third feature would be a large format so the pictures and print would be easier on the eyes.

This book does not contain pictures of every variant of every piece. It does contain at least one variant of every National WHW (598 different pieces) issued by the WHW street collections program from 1933 to 1944. By 1945, WHW collections and token distributions had ceased. Also contained are at least one variant of the paper door plaques (42 pieces) issued by the WHW door to door collection program between 1933 and 1940, WHW postcards, WHW stamps, and a WHW collection can. The total number of different items shown in this book is over 800, with over 550 color pictures on 132 pages.

For more information, or to order, see:
www.winterhilfswerk.com

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