Well, you've got your little wooden
SA and
SS men, the
Fett Kontroller and a young Parker..."
Yawol mine Dame,
schnell-maken mine dame" (the grey one in the last post?), now they need somewhere to live...soldiers live in barracks, so they too made up the little miniature world of worked pine and other woods.
The
Stabswache or 'Staff Guard' were Hitler's personal bodyguard, some eight or so Loyal
SA men, soon renamed the
Stosstruppe '
Adolf Hitler' they would eventually become the
1st SS Panzer Division '
Leibstandart'. The fact that this little watch-post -
Soldatenheim/Soldatenhaus - is named after the short-lived moniker of a unit from the early days of the Beer-hall Putsch, shows how popular the mythology of the National Socialists had become, and might date it to the earlier 1930's?.
A larger building, in the Wilhelmine (Wilhelmian?) style (contemporaneous with Victorian architecture). Very much in the typical urban style as against the old rural/market town's city-wall post/watch-tower of the previous shot; the barrack blocks we lived in at Wavell Barracks, Berlin were very similar to this one, but had longer wings and four stories, one in the high-pitched roof.
Apart from the Swastika's these buildings can't really be regarded as 'sinister', they are in fact rather charming, and would have been available without the
hakenkreuz stencil with other wooden sets, perhaps with May-pole dancing villagers, traditional 'toy' soldiers (think Nutcracker suite!) or
lederhozen sporting Oompa-bands. Indeed - as we saw here -
Not Necessarily Erzgibirge; the little tower on the
SA-Heim still features on these toys today, and often finished in a herb-green!
2 comments:
Awesome stuff Hugh. I had the chance to stay in an old Kaserne barracks in Wiesbaden. Imagine our building here only longer. Very high ceilings, thick walls, and niches for rifle stands built right into the walls. Cool!
Hi Ed - I know - I've know barracks like them in Bad Tolz (US Rangers), Wiengarten (ILRRP School) and the transit camp at Hannover.
Our own in Spandau were renovated by the Berlin Senate (or at least; on their bill) and because the buildings have the same sort of status as a 'listed' building here in the UK, they would knock small mouse-holes in the walls, pass scaffolding bars through the holes and clamp an interior scaffold to the exterior one as they went, taking out all the floors, attic joists and walls, but leaving the shell relatively untouched.
It must have cost three-times the cost of knocking them down and whacking-up a new-build...and they did each block in less the 12 months...which is why they are the leading economy in Europe!!!
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