Does anyone recognize this tornister pattern?
I purchased this thing on eBay a year or two ago before I learned anything - rookie mistake, guilty. At the time, I thought from the nice fur and earlier tab arrangement for the Kochgeschirr that it was an earlier model. Then it arrived and I was perplexed. It was sold without straps, but when I went to replace them, I discovered the slots for the shoulder straps were too narrow! I finally found a narrower set of straps sold by a gentleman in France that fit it perfectly - and those turned out to be RZM marked. (The wider strap in the comparison photo is a reproduction, but it matches in size and shape to the straps from an RZM original tornister I had at one time.)
So.. what is this thing? Assuming the narrower straps were originally made for a pack like this, I wouldn't think the design at least was post war, even if this particular model might be. I'd originally thought perhaps this was a political pattern - something intended to fill out the ranks in newsreels but that wouldn't actually be carried out on into the countryside for actual use. However, the PL pack specifications I found in the '36 RZM guidelines uses the normal wider straps that hook onto a belt in front.
There's no maker marks on the pack itself I can find. Some of the leather looks a bit artificial, but I'm not sure. The rivets in place of stitches suggests midwar or later, do they not? Also I'm not certain, but I think that red reinforcing strip you see at the inside top of the main body is cardboard of some kind rather than rawhide, and I don't see the nettle cloth wrap on the wood.
So what is this? Some mid/late war hodgepodge from available tooling and materials? A niche homemade political item? Some auxiliary pattern that was never important enough to document? Even a postwar movie prop or Eastern European tourist bait or something? For what it's worth, the last owner says it was sold by a militaria company in California, but has no idea what its earlier history was. Oh - and the long fastening straps on the flap look to have gotten a lot of use, though that could have just been from a kid using it from a bookbag in later years.
I purchased this thing on eBay a year or two ago before I learned anything - rookie mistake, guilty. At the time, I thought from the nice fur and earlier tab arrangement for the Kochgeschirr that it was an earlier model. Then it arrived and I was perplexed. It was sold without straps, but when I went to replace them, I discovered the slots for the shoulder straps were too narrow! I finally found a narrower set of straps sold by a gentleman in France that fit it perfectly - and those turned out to be RZM marked. (The wider strap in the comparison photo is a reproduction, but it matches in size and shape to the straps from an RZM original tornister I had at one time.)
So.. what is this thing? Assuming the narrower straps were originally made for a pack like this, I wouldn't think the design at least was post war, even if this particular model might be. I'd originally thought perhaps this was a political pattern - something intended to fill out the ranks in newsreels but that wouldn't actually be carried out on into the countryside for actual use. However, the PL pack specifications I found in the '36 RZM guidelines uses the normal wider straps that hook onto a belt in front.
There's no maker marks on the pack itself I can find. Some of the leather looks a bit artificial, but I'm not sure. The rivets in place of stitches suggests midwar or later, do they not? Also I'm not certain, but I think that red reinforcing strip you see at the inside top of the main body is cardboard of some kind rather than rawhide, and I don't see the nettle cloth wrap on the wood.
So what is this? Some mid/late war hodgepodge from available tooling and materials? A niche homemade political item? Some auxiliary pattern that was never important enough to document? Even a postwar movie prop or Eastern European tourist bait or something? For what it's worth, the last owner says it was sold by a militaria company in California, but has no idea what its earlier history was. Oh - and the long fastening straps on the flap look to have gotten a lot of use, though that could have just been from a kid using it from a bookbag in later years.
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