heil history....

a while back, i picked up a was seal stamp that i thought was quite interesting, and probably not very common. i posted about it, as i was looking for a translation of the high german. my father in-law didn't learn high german, and could only partly translate it.

when i purchased the seal, the place selling it had a second seal, but at the time i didn't have the money (well, still don't but....) and didn't really realize the significance until much later. here is the first seal:


I believe I have mostly tranlated (or figured out) the text:
Staatliches Jahn Gnmnarium in Salzwedel

Staatliches: National
Jahn Gnmnarium: Jahn Gymnasium: Friedrich Ludwig Jahn School
in Salzwedel: Town of Salzwedel

So, this was likely the seal used for the 'National Jahn School in Salzwedel' during the Nazi rule.


the second seal, i later realized when i began looking into translating the first, had the coat of arms for the town of Salzwedel on it. this is what made me realize i should probably go back and buy it and keep the two together. thankfully, it was a not very interesting chunk of brass, and over a year later it was still exactly in the same place. I will mention that this seal does not have a handle, and it appears to have previously been mounted to something that was removed. Hence it is only a square of brass about 1/2" high - and thankfully easy to miss.


Konigl PR Gymnasium Salzwedel

Konigl PR: Royal Priviledged
Gymnasium: School
Salzwedel: Town of Salzwedel

This appears to be the seal that was in use for the 'Royal (Grammar) School - Salzwedel' as it was in 1918 - until renamed Jahn Gymnasium in 1931, and was likely the precursor to the seal above.

I would be more than happy to be corrected by anyone who has better knowledge of such things, as I've relied primarily on Google.

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images were scanned and flipped for readability - they are actually mirror images so that the was seal itself appears as above.

How did they end up in my hands? I bought them from a shop that specializes in military memorabilia and antiques. They were liquidating someone's collection of Nazi memorabilia. How they got them is anyone's guess - but I would imagine at some point, someone decided they were a nice 'souvenir' while they were helping to liberate the town.

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misc notes during researching the above:

Nazi Rise to power: 1925-1933
WWII: 1937-1945


Jahn School History (excerpts):

6th Period National Gymnasium- National Gymnasium Jahn 1918 - 1937

• 1918 November-Revolution: Royal Grammar School will state humanistic Gymnasium with 9 years of schooling
• 1931 Naming: Jahn Gymnasium

7th Period Jahn school - State School for boys 1937 - 1945

• 1937 Converting the state into high school gymnasium for boys with 8 years of schooling
• 1943 - 1945 Use of students of class from 6 to 8 as an Air Force-Navy assistant helpers at the
• 1939 - 1945 Second World War - More than 140 former pupils had their lives as victims of World War II

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German Eagle (Wikipedia excerpt): The Nazi party used the traditional German eagle, standing atop of a swastika inside a wreath of oak leaves. When the eagle is looking to its left shoulder, it symbolises the Nazi party, and was called the Parteiadler. In contrast, when the eagle is looking to its right shoulder, it symbolises the country (Reich), and was therefore called the Reichsadler. After the Nazi party came to power in Germany, they forced the replacement of the traditional version of the German eagle with their modified party symbol throughout the country and all its institutions.

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some history of the town of Salzwedel, snipped from wikipedia:

Salzwedel (IPA: [ˈzaltsveːdəl], officially known as Hansestadt Salzwedel, is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is the capital of the district (Kreis) of Altmarkkreis Salzwedel.

The castle of Salzwedel in the Altmark was first documented in 1112. As part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the settlement was first mentioned as a town in 1233.

As in other German cities during the time of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, the Jewish segment of the population of the city was systematically disowned and driven out of the city.

In 1943, the Neuengamme concentration camp built a female subcamp in Salzwedel, capable of holding more than 1,000 female prisoners. Eventually more than 3,000 women were held there, both Jews and non-Jews. The guard staff at the camp included sixty SS men and women. One Aufseherin is known today by name, Lieselotte Darnstaedt, who was born in 1908. Darnstaedt also served at Ravensbrück before coming to Salzwedel. On April 29, 1945, the US Army liberated the Salzwedel women's subcamp, and also a men's camp nearby for male non-German political prisoners. They were shocked to find more than ninety corpses of women who had died of typhus, dysentery and malaria. At the beginning of 1945, prior to the arrival of American ground forces, Allied war planes attacked the main train station of Salzwedel, killing 300 people. The US Army eventually turned over control of the city to the Soviet Red Army, causing Salzwedel to eventually become part of the German Democratic Republic.

On November 9, 1989 the East-West German border crossing near Salzwedel was openend, along with East-West border crossings in the rest of the country, allowing East Germans residing in Salzwedel and elsewhere to travel freely to West Germany for the first time since the building of the Berlin Wall. In 1990 Salzwedel received its first democratically elected city government.