German units

[auchonvillerssomme]

Can anyone identify the unit and the collar badge please?

Mick

[wainfleet]

Is it the Village People?

All right, all right, I'm going!

[bob lembke]

I think that the picture might be post-war. Note that most of the caps seem to have some sort of blaze about the lower cockade, which I thought was Reichsheer. On the other hand, the caps still have two cockades, while I thought that postwar the top one, the one for the state (e.g., Prussia, Bavaria) was eliminated.

As for the collar badge, I have never seen anything like it in WW I photos, while many Freikorps (1919 - 1923) had specific badges. I think that there were something like 2500 different Freikorps. And some Freikorps later blended into the Reichsheer.

My guess is early post-war. But I am not a uniform guy, and less so for post-WW I.

Bob Lembke

[Tinhat47]

Weird ... it looks like a West Surreys badge with the flag broken off.

[rbrauerei]

I had the same thought as Bob; the wreath around the lower cockade seems very much Reichsheer. Since not all of them have the wreath - and still two cockades - maybe very early post-war. They just haven't yet fully transformed their caps.

The badge looks very much like a common symbol of Hannover. So, perhaps a Freikorps unit in Niedersachsen or Hannover.

[auchonvillerssomme]

The bigger pic may help. some of them also seem to have ?rank markings on left arm

[eparges]

Hi

to me they don't appear to be 'Freikorps' but (Vorläufiger - provisional) Reichswehr: the seated officer (or senior NCO) wears the model 1919 rankinsignia (Leutnant or Feldwebelleutnant) to the fore-arm (just above the cuffs), only worn from 1919-1920. The lower cocade is still the Reichskokarde, not yet the Reichsadler. Their caps caps though are the 1919 model, so I'd situate this pic late 1919/1920. Can you make out the nrs on their shoulderstraps (the man laying to the left in front of the officer appears to have '79', which would fit the hannovrian connection, former JR79 v.Voight-Rhetz)?