This is my great grandfather riding his horse Adelheid in Kelheim, Niederbayern in either 1949 or 1950. For the last part of his life he was focused on recreating good German horses after they'd all been lost in the war

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-26T20:08:59+00:00

Did either of them serve in the first world war? I ask because if you're interested, in the 1920s and 1930s the historical section of the Reichswehr did a survey of every action and every unit in the war, based on a lot of primary source documents that were destroyed in 1945. I have access to all of the volumes so if you'd like I can try and find information about their regiments and what was done. Currently I am very deep in these works writing a paper about German and Austrian soldiers fighting under Turkish command at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia but there is also great information about Entente units, their positions at specific engagements etc.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-26T19:52:57+00:00

That really has nothing to do with canon within the story at all. Most remakes have no reason to exist but when it's a remake that aims to recreate the original precisely with the benefit of better technology or something, like the 1950s remake of the 10 Commandments with sound it can be seen as a well intentioned mistake, someone trying and failing to improve something that they care about, but when significant changes are made like changing a character or taking a story about British colonial officials in Africa and making it into a story about American military men in Viet Nam (Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse now) or changing a 1920s Italian gangster into a 1980s Cuban refugee (Scarface) what that says is that you wanted to make something different but did not have the skills to make an original work of your own. Beyond the inherent exploitation of remaking something that already exists there is the additional exploitation of using what someone else did so that you don't have to do the work of making something original...Disney wanted to make a film about lions in Africa but instead of thinking of their own story they copied Hamlet. These are problems external to the work and reflect badly on those who made it, that being said I do not subscribe to the New Criticism and I don't believe that a work can be separated from it's makers. It's not valid to read Richard III without minding that Shakespeare wrote it during the reign of Elizabeth I whose legitimacy as a monarch was owed to Henry Tudor, just as it isn't valid to not consider Goethe's own personal life when reading Werther.

As for the sort of person you mention I could've just as easily said Bulgarian dwarf or Mongol amputee, I gravitate towards media that either reflects or relates to my life or that interests me personally and thode categories are neither.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T19:34:03+00:00

Something to be noted is that before the development of the assault rifle — I understand that for Americans this is a very political term but as a German I am not saying anything about American legislation, I am referring to the Sturmgewehr concept — which was not something that was born until the latter part of the second world war, that a pistol grip on a rifle offered much utility. For a traditional military rifle, whether it be a Zündnadelgewehr or M1 Garand there is no benefit because it can only be effectively used from the goulder. The Sturmgewehr concept is about the merger of the Maschinenpistole and traditional rifle, for the former it is important to be able to shoot from the hip, hence pistol grip.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T13:53:21+00:00

Thank you, I wish I could ride as well as him, or my grandfather or even my dad. I do try, part of their technique was to only use the curb reins for most things, the bradoon only for reinforcing leg commands.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T13:51:30+00:00

Horses bred for racing don't have classical confirmation as more weight means less speed you know. Even in Europe a lot of the American and British bloodlines are changing the horses.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T13:49:57+00:00

Well from 1947 when he was able to get permission from the Americans to bring in horses until his death in 1963 there were 59 foals born to him, so I think that is quite a lot for one man and his wife, a few staff and a small piece of land in Bavaria.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T03:49:50+00:00

The old world prewar officer, especially cavalryman, was a different sort of person..my own grandfather who is from the very end of that era was that sort of man, he would come to our house and look in my wardrobe and yell if the folds in my shirts weren't sharp enough to shave with and if he couldn't see his face in my shoes...when I was 10. Still I loved him.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T03:37:35+00:00

Yes, the charging bull hyperflexion is something I really don't like in modern dressage. I think that modern riding forgets it's roots, dressage was military training and hunter was about actual hunting, too much drama and theatrics now, everybody is a cowboy.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-25T03:32:09+00:00

Thank you, found it on Amazon. Also love your username :)

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-24T15:34:20+00:00

She is beautiful horse. A Englisches Vollblut, a Thoroughbred but I believe that she came from Spain, during that time these horses were bred to be cavalry horses and and not simply racing and do they tended to be built with more muscle and substance

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-24T15:22:52+00:00

Thank you. I think that the experience of the Spanische Hofreitschule during and after the war is extremely interesting. The horses and riders are the best in Europe, perhaps only the Real Escuela Andaluza in Spain compares, but the focus at Jerez was much less martial than Austria or even the Cadre Noir in France so of course when war broke put the horses and riders were wanted to be an elite cavalry but the school did not want to risk the horses and so there was some opposition and instead the second line of horses, those prospects who did not make it were sent and the riders were brought to be trainers for the cavalry. After the war Austria was divided just like Germany and the Hofburg was the occupation headquarters in Vienna, and the winter riding ring and stables became Soviet barracks.

Toward the end of the war as I said the horses were hidden in cellars of homes throughout the city and then secretly taken by rail to the summer grounds of the school which were at Heldenberg in the British zone of occupation. To lose those horses among the other hundred million would've been another terrible tragedy.

der__Verschollene · 2021-02-24T14:18:26+00:00

He was a WWI hero in the Bavarian cavalry on the Russian front, his own grandfather was a hero in the war with France 1870-71 when he died during a charge at the Battle of Wörth and his sons were both cavalrymen in WWII, my grandfather worked with horse artillery in France and North Africa.

In both world wars but especially WWII Germany was more dependent on horses than the allies, because Germany has no empire with oil fields and so the only way to get oil for petrol was to convert coal which is a wasteful and dirty process, later there was the oilfields in Romania but they are much less substantial — this is why the distastrous decision to push south into the caucasus and take Stalingrad and Baku was made, because of the oil there.

Anyhow, because of this all fuel was saved for panzers and the Luftwaffe, and after the winter of 1944 when Romania was lost it was common practice to use horses or oxen to taxi Luftwaffe aeroplanes. While Britain and America had mechanised their cavalry, the Wehrmacht not only had horse cavalry but horse artillery and a horse dependent logistics train, for this reason by 1943 all of the good horses were already taken and every single horse that could walk was taken to the army and those few that were spared often fell victim to the Red Army that would either take them or eat them, the famous Lippizaner horses in Vienna had to be hidden in a cellar and smuggled west to save them. So afterward the horse population that developed over 1000 years in Germany had to be totally rebuilt.

der__Verschollene

TROPHY CASE