{"product_id":"imperial-german-wwi-iron-cross-award-paperweight-named-uffz-helms-garde-gren-rgt-5","title":"Imperial German WWI Iron Cross Award Paperweight Named Uffz Helms Garde-Gren Rgt 5","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA World War I glass paperweight preserving an original German newspaper award announcement for the Iron Cross, named to a specific recipient and his regiment. The piece consists of a molded, colorless pressed-glass block with a scalloped or rope-twist border, beneath which a printed newsprint clipping and a paper Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial war ensign) ground have been mounted against a felt or flannel backing. It measures approximately 4 by 2.5 inches (10.2 by 6.4 cm). Objects of this kind were produced as inexpensive patriotic keepsakes, allowing a family to seal and display a treasured piece of ephemera — here, the public notice that their son had been decorated for bravery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe printed clipping reads, in German fraktur: Das Eiserne Kreuz. Das Eiserne Kreuz erhielt: Helms, Eduard, Unteroffizier, Garde-Grenadier-Regt. Nr. 5, 1. Komp., Sohn des Landwirts Herrn Helms in Watenbüttel; befindet sich als Schwerverwundeter im Johanniter-Krankenhause zu Reichenbach. In translation: \"The Iron Cross. The Iron Cross was awarded to: Helms, Eduard, non-commissioned officer (Unteroffizier), Garde-Grenadier-Regiment No. 5, 1st Company, son of the farmer Herr Helms of Watenbüttel; presently a severely wounded man in the Johanniter Hospital at Reichenbach.\" The notice is the kind that appeared in local and regional German papers throughout the war, in which communities tracked the decorations, wounds, and fates of their own men. It records not only the award of the Eisernes Kreuz (Iron Cross) but the fact that Unteroffizier Helms had been gravely wounded and was convalescing under the care of the Johanniter, the Protestant Order of Saint John, whose volunteer hospital service formed one of the principal wartime nursing organizations of the German Empire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe unit named is among the most historically significant in the Imperial German order of battle. The Garde-Grenadier-Regiment Nr. 5, styled the Königin Elisabeth Garde-Grenadier-Regiment (Queen Elisabeth Guard Grenadier Regiment), was a Prussian Guard formation with roots reaching to the early eighteenth century and garrisoned at Spandau, outside Berlin. As a Guard regiment it drew its men and its prestige from across the Kingdom of Prussia, and it served under the Prussian royal house of Hohenzollern, whose head, Wilhelm II, was simultaneously German Emperor. During the First World War the Prussian Guard regiments were committed to the hardest fighting on both fronts, and the loss and decoration records of these units are correspondingly heavy. A named notice tying an individual Unteroffizier of the regiment's 1st Company to a specific home town and a specific hospital is precisely the sort of documentary thread that allows a soldier's war to be reconstructed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe recipient's home town, Watenbüttel, is a village now incorporated into Braunschweig (Brunswick), which places the Helms family in the Duchy of Brunswick even as Eduard Helms served in a Prussian Guard regiment — a common pattern in the Imperial period, when men of one state frequently served in the units of another. Reichenbach, the site of his convalescence, refers to one of several German towns of that name; in the absence of further detail the notice does not fix which, and no claim is made here beyond what the clipping states. The description of him as a Schwerverwundeter (severely wounded man) marks him as a serious casualty, and the involvement of the Johanniter hospital reflects the vast improvised medical apparatus that the war demanded.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCondition is honest and consistent with age and construction. The glass is intact in overall form but chipped, with losses to one edge and border as noted, and shows the small internal flaws and bubbles typical of period pressed glass. The paper elements beneath — the printed clipping and the tricolor flag ground — remain legible, with age-toning, foxing, and green staining visible through the glass, the last likely from the felt backing and mount over time. The backing itself is loose, no longer sealing tightly against the glass. Despite these faults the essential content, the printed award notice with its full attribution, is clearly readable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe appeal of this piece rests entirely on its documentation. Generic patriotic paperweights of the war years survive in some numbers, but examples preserving a fully named Iron Cross award notice, with rank, Guard regiment, company, home town, and hospital all recorded, are far less common and offer a genuine research anchor. For a collector of Prussian Guard material, of Iron Cross groupings, or of named WWI ephemera, the object is a self-contained biographical document rather than a decorative curio. Its condition faults keep it accessible, while its attribution gives it a standing that undamaged but anonymous examples cannot match.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50183743897839,"sku":"10-40","price":89.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/9169\/5855\/files\/10-40_2.jpg?v=1784153553","url":"https:\/\/derrittmeister.com\/products\/imperial-german-wwi-iron-cross-award-paperweight-named-uffz-helms-garde-gren-rgt-5","provider":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}