As already mentioned in my article: "A rare Brunswick order", the order decorations with swords for war merit are of extreme rarity. With a total number of 6000 Brunswick decorations of the House Order, order badges with swords account only at 4.6% with close to only 300 pieces. (Please click the following list for a complete list of all decorations awarded: Brunswick Order Statistic).

 

You have to know in this regard, that there are two different kinds with swords with different award numbers. First of all, there is the type that had swords underneath the cross, as awarded from 12.09.1870 on. Than there is secondly the type with swords through the middle, awarded from 15.03.1909 on.

 

I like to introduce an original cross with swords underneath the cross. It is an example of a knight cross 1st class made by  L.Heinemann (P.Baumann Nachfolger), which were distributed through the gold worker W. Kausche to the order chancellery.  The piece you find in the following picture was one of the pieces awarded during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71. The orders chancellery ordered only 88 of these special made crosses.

 

   

Source: Stätisches Museum Braunschweig; Arbeitsberichte; Roger Reckewell/Jens Fischer:“Orden, Ehren- und Abzeichen des Herzogtums Braunschweig Lüneburg von 1809 bis 1918“; 1987

© A. Schulze Ising, III/03