Heer Sports Shirt Eagle

Product Description: This Heer Sports Shirt Eagle is a great, representative example of this impressive-looking piece of insignia. It’s Bevo, machine woven construction, as all of these were, and is the second Heer pattern used in the Wehrmacht era, with great detail to the German national eagle and swastika emblem. This emblem is rendered in black thread, on a white field. This piece was never issued or used; all of the thin rayon backing fabric is present, just as it would have been when it left the factory. It has never been folded or stitched to a sports shirt. On the back side, the emblem is visible in reverse, as is typical with Bevo made insignia. The condition of this piece is outstanding, and rates as near mint, with only extremely slight toning to the thin rayon backing that does not affect the woven insignia. This Heer Sports Shirt Eagle is an eye-catching piece of German Army insignia.

Historical Description: Physical fitness and competition were two concepts that were highly valued in the ideology of the Third Reich. All kinds of sports clubs and organizations flourished in the years before WWII, with larger Reich level organizations supervising athletics, promoting events, and issuing awards for sport achievement. The various Nazi era civil, political, military, and paramilitary organizations also promoted or even mandated exercise and sports for their members. To facilitate this, these organizations instituted sport uniforms, which typically included sport shoes, and for warm weather, shorts, and a knit tank top with a woven emblem specific to that organization. In cold weather, the sport uniform generally included dark colored knit trousers and a sweatshirt, usually also with the sports-specific organizational emblem. The woven organizational emblem patch used on the sports patch was often a rather large patch, making these appealing souvenirs for Allied troops as they swept into Germany. Some types of the sports patches are very common today, though intact sports clothing is rarer, and some sports emblems for smaller organizations, made in limited numbers, are very rare.