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As already mentioned in
other reports, the sword decorations are always the rare
ones among German Imperial orders. Especially the
smaller German countries were quite scroogy giving out
those awards for bravery.
The "Fürstlich Lippische
Ehrenkreuz" Lippe Honor Cross was founded October 25,
1869 for both lines of the house of Lippe in three
grades. Those pieces show the cipher
"LA" for Leopold Adolph.
Swords
for war merit were added to the order in 1871
The knight cross grade was
named 2nd class from 1869 to 1887, then 3rd class
1887-1890. Awarded with swords through the middle from
April 20, 1871 to Jun 8,1871 only 5 time by Lippe. Unitl
december 1872 another 5 by Lippe and 6 by Schaumburg
found their way to some brave men¹.
Due to the separation of the
house of Lippe in 1890 the order experienced a change and
existed from then on in 2 different designs. Actually,
only the reverse was changed to where it featured the
initials of the two princes as:
During World War I only 25
decorations of the 3rd class with swords were awarded.
The earlier pieces were made from real gold and had
silver gilt swords attached (unitl 1914). The piece
pictured here is an example of the later period (1916 -
18) made completely of gilt Silver:
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averse
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reverse
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Even the 4th class 1st grade
with
swords has to be counted to those examples of rare WWI
decorations with only 82 examples ever awarded from
Mai 30,1905 to November 11, 1918: the 2nd grade of the
same class was even more rare with only 47 pieces ever
given out to those brace soldiers ¹.
¹Reiner
Schwark: "Orden und Ehrenzeichen des Fürstentums
Lippe Detmold 1778-1933", Schriften des
Lippischen Landesmuseeums, Band VI.
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