Eight Place Imperial Medal Bar

Product Description: This Eight Place Imperial Medal Bar is an extremely impressive set of medals, featuring some very interesting and desirable awards. The first medal here is a 1914 issue Mecklenburg-Schwerin Military Merit Cross. It’s a beautiful example, with nearly all of the original gilt finish intact. The next three meals are the three grades of the Austrian Military Merit Medal, in Gold, Silver and Bronze. These awards feature a bust of Franz Joseph I, and are very nice, with great original luster on the large Gold grade award, and attractive toning to the Silver and Bronze. In fifth place on this bar is the Romanian medal for the jubilee of King Carol I, with a swords device. The sixth medal is the Hungarian World War 1 Commemorative Medal in silvered bronze, followed by the Bulgarian World War 1 Commemorative Medal. All of these Romanian, Austrian and Hungarian awards are great examples, with attractive original finish and patina. The final medal here is a scarce and desirable Azad Hind medal, with swords, as issued to Indians and Germans in the Indian Legion as well as to the Indian National Army. It’s a typical zinc award, that has lost its silver finish with time. All of the medals are complete with their correct original ribbons, which show only minor, expected age toning. The reverse has a scarlet wool backing and an intact pin and catch assembly. This eight place Imperial medal bar is absolutely loaded with history, and displays extremely well. The condition is excellent plus.

Historical Description: The German Military had a long tradition of issuing awards for achievements ranging from long service and participation in specific campaigns, to battlefield valor. Some types of awards were to be pinned on the uniform, while others were medals that were suspended from ribbons. On the field uniform, only the ribbons for these medals were to be worn. But for dress uniforms used for parade and walking-out purposes, soldiers wore all of their medals in the form of medal bars that would be pinned to the uniform, on the soldier’s chest. Each medal bar was individually custom made by a tailor or a manufacturer of insignia. They were not issue items, they had to be purchased. These ranged from single mounted awards, to long racks of medals indicating a distinguished career of many years, sometimes with medals from both World Wars and even earlier awards of Imperial Germany. German medal bars were also worn on dress uniforms of civil, political, and paramilitary organizations.

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