1941Spoils of War – Militaria

The firefighter helmet and uniform parts bear the inscription and symbol of the French fire department: “Sapeurs pompiers de Marckolsheim”. The town of Marckolsheim is located in Alsace. It was situated directly on the so-called “Maginot Line,” the French defense line during the Second World War, and was fiercely contested in 1940. The inside of the helmet bears the owner’s name, “Gasseny”.

On March 21, 1941, Ludwig Krieger donated a total of 317 small-scale objects to the Alsfeld Museum. Among these were military equipment, belt buckles, steel helmets, shoes, vests, belts and straps, shoulder boards, collars, buttons, a horse gas mask, a suit, and books. Additionally, the identity tag of a certain Jean Noel from the year 1932 is among the donated objects.

The horse gas mask is of Soviet manufacture, yet it features German instructions for use. This suggests that it is a gas mask produced during the era of the Weimar Republic. Following the end of the First World War, the German Reich was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles from rearming militarily. At the same time, there were international efforts to ban the use of poison gas altogether. The German Reich bypassed both restrictions by secretly collaborating with the Soviet Union in the military sphere. Beginning in 1923, both nations conducted experiments on Russian territory regarding the production and application of poison gas.

The donor Ludwig Krieger was born in Wiesbaden in 1892 and lived in Alsfeld from 1925 onwards. In 1934, he was appointed deputy director of the regional savings bank (Bezirkssparkasse) and joined the NSDAP in May 1937. In August 1939, he became the staff paymaster (Stabszahlmeister) in the procurement office of the Wehrmacht. It is to be assumed that he acquired the militaria from the former occupied countries in the course of these duties. Krieger lived in Alsfeld until his death in 1946.