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Couple of fascinating collective awards today in the East Germany section. They were designed to encourage collective work in the socialist ideal, with the qualifications for the award encompassing social activities as well as excellent work and correct political opinions. Apparenetly candidates did such activities as organising group trips to the cinema to demonstrate this… for once awarded, the collective had to requalify annually!
Two more of the awards for good socialist work, the Honour Title of Brigade of Socialist Wprk and the Honour Title of Activist of Socialist Labour… this last was an individual rather than collective award. and was handed out in the thousands!
Work-wise we are coming up to the academic year end grading season so I may or may not escape the clutches of piles of student work to pop in here. I’ll do my best, I need some play after all!
My students are due to submit their ‘capstone’ Final Year Projects tomorrow, so there has been much activity from them as they get a bit panicked…
… so a relief to escape to here and add the Honoured Activist of Seven Year Plan and Honoured Activist of Five Year Plan to the East German section. Both had the year of award on them, so I haven’t cluttered the place up with ALL the years, just a representative sample. I’m also coming to the conclusion there were two different reverses for the 5-year plan one but I cannot find anything much about that yet, just some examples… and also some bearing years before the award was actually instituted. Not sure what’s going on there at all!
We are reaching ‘peak grading’ now, and I had a hard drive die on me yesterday (GRRR, fortunately it contained neither medals information nor student work!), but I’ve snuck away to add the last couple of early ‘activist’ awards, the Honour Title of Activist of Two Year Plan and the Honour Title of Activist. Being a hard worker and a good socialist was of great importance even in the early days of the German Democratic Republic.
The marking monster is still rampant (I didn’t get here at all last week, sorry) but I escaped long enough to add another early ‘Good Work’ award to the East German section, the Medal for Excellent Achievement. This had four different types during its lifespan and I’ve been busy tracking them all down for your delight.
I evaded the Marking Monster again to add Medal for Excellent Achievements in Agricultural Production Cooperatives and the Medal for Exemplary Learning Collective in Socialist Competition. Now I have taught apprentices (we have a programme in the UK called a degree apprenticeship that takes apprentices right through to bachelor and master degrees!) but we’ve never asked them to display a proper spirit in community affairs or to do military training, which these apprentices were required to do in good socialist style!
The next item should be a FDJ (Free German Youth) award, the Medal for Very Good Service in Socialist Competition… but that had so many variations that I’ve put in a placeholder for now and once I’ve figured it all out myself will add it here.
Please forgive me. My husband is in the hospital and I am going to visit him in the time normally set aside for the Images Database. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I can!
Dearly beloved is still ill and I spent the afternoon at the hospital agian. Many apologies…
Hopefully I shall get him back during the coming week.
Thank you, John.
He’s back home, got him back Friday afternoon.
Added one medal to East Germany, the Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander Medal, named for a fascinating 19th century German pioneer of educational theory, who was always getting in trouble for his socialist views… and collected proverbs all his life. Some he used in his teaching, but many were collected out of pure interest.
The grading monster is still snapping round my heels but should be vanquished soon, disappearing under a flurry of examination boards.
Managed to escape long enough to add the East German Medal for Fighting Flood Disaster in July 1954.
The Marking Monster is now well and truly slain, so back to medals… East German ones! We are now starting a run of long service awards for various trades, the first one being for the railways.
I thought it was straightforward, but I like to run some checks before putting anything on here, and it’s just as well I did. I’ve discovered that there were two versions. The initial one was awarded in three classes for 50, 40, and 25 years of service; then in 1973 they changed it to 30, 20, and 10 years of service and added another class by adding a fancy clip (which I haven’t found an image of yet!) to the gold medal to award to men for 40 years’ service and women for 35 years… very egalitarian and socialist 🙂
As they also changed the reverse in 1973, I’ve spent a happy afternoon looking for images for you to enjoy.
I wonder if the next few will prove so interested and involved. A brief glance suggests that they will be so more fun ahead! There are not so many of them as the Honour Titles and Medals of Merit – but next time we stay with the transportation theme.
As promised, today the Medal for Loyal Service in Sea Transport. Slightly easier as although they changed the terms of award to make it a bit easier to earn, the actual medals did not change so I didn’t have quite so much to find… and 2 were here in our database already, thanks to John Fitzgerald.
BUT… I did make the critical mistake of noticing a new issue of JOMSA and going off to read that instead of adding more medals here. Sorry!
Added the Medal for Loyal Service in Civil Aviation to the East German section… all SIX classes of the beast.
But there’s more. King Charles III of the UK has finally awarded his first Royal Family Order (to his wife Camilla) so that’s been added to the United Kingdom section as well. The Royal Family Orders are a delightful anachronism, being miniatures of the reigning monarch presented to Royal ladies and worn on a ribbon bow on the left shoulder, but only in evening dress. A recipient may wear the Royal Family Orders received from previous monarchs (thus Camilla also wears one received from Elizabeth II). However Elizabeth II never wore her own Order, just two received from her father and grandfather.
There’s a whole raft more of Charles III medals to come, some new (2 or 3 are already here, the Coronation Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, and the Nuclear Test Medal) and some being releases of existing medals that bear the monarch’s head or cypher and need updating to reflect the change in management.
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