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After all, 24,000 euros.

Not a fortune, but the Army Museum in Brussels paid a lot of money in 2012 for a uniform skirt that is said to have belonged to a prominent war criminal from Hitler’s close circle: SS group leader Hermann Fegelein.

It is extremely doubtful whether you should pay that much money (in 2012 significantly more than the average annual income in Belgium) for such a junk.

But now it turns out that the attribution to Fegelein is most likely a fake.

Exhibition rooms of the Musée Royal de l'Armée in Brussels

Source: picture alliance / Daniel Kalker

This is reported by the Belgian daily “De Morgen”.

In the collar there is a tailor's label, the Petersen & Co. company from Gabelsberger Strasse 1 in Munich's city center.

The name "Hermann Fegelein", the number "9885" and the month "VI 1944" are handwritten on it.

But precisely this supposed evidence should convict the forgers.

Who was Hermann Fegelein?

Born in 1906 in Ansbach, the enthusiastic rider failed one after the other, first with the professional goal of being a cavalry officer in the Reichswehr and then as an officer candidate with the equally militarily organized Bavarian State Police.

In search of opportunities for advancement, Fegelein turned to National Socialism, joined the SS in 1931 and the NSDAP in the following year, and made a steep career from 1933.

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His parents' equestrian estate became the "SS main riding school" and Hermann Fegelein was its commander, SS chief Heinrich Himmler alone responsible.

One promotion followed the next: at the age of 29 he became SS-Sturmbannführer at the beginning of 1936, thus comparable to a major in the Wehrmacht, one year later he was Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and less than six months later he became a standard leader (colonel).

In the campaign against Poland in September 1939, Fegelein had his only real front-line deployment with the SS Reiterstaffel;

he was shot.

Afterwards, on Himmler's direct orders, he formed an SS equestrian standard, which was primarily intended to fight partisans, but which in reality committed mass murders of the civilian population.

According to Fegelein's own report, his association killed at least 13,788 alleged partisans in two of its own dead and 14 wounded.

According to Martin Cüppers, an expert on Nazi crimes, Fegelein ordered the squadrons of the 2nd SS Cavalry Regiment: “All Jews must be shot.

Drive Jewish women into the swamps. "

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Overall, Fegelein was responsible for the murder of at least 40,000 people - and was awarded the Knight's Cross in 1942.

Wounded by snipers, he was promoted to SS Brigade Leader.

At 37 he was now something of a general.

The historian Heike B. Görtemaker describes Hermann Fegelein as a “daredevil and notorious womanizer”, but at the same time as one of the “most brutal SS henchmen of Himmler, whose protégé he was”.

The orders of the Reichsführer SS were "sacred" to him, wrote Fegelein to Himmler in October 1943, shortly before he became his liaison officer at the Führer headquarters.

Now part of Hitler's “court”, his “surrogate family” (Görtemaker), Fegelein tied up with Margarete (“Gretl”) Braun, the younger sister of Hitler's enigmatic companion Eva Braun.

The two married on June 3, 1944 - and Hitler hosted the celebration at the Berghof.

Fegelein as SS brigade leader, but with the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords - an order he received after July 20, 1944

Source: picture-alliance / dpa / Ullstein

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The marriage was short: at the end of April 1945, Fegelein was a liaison officer for Hitler's entourage in Berlin's Führerbunker.

But he left without permission, was arrested - allegedly in bed with a lover and a lot of money - and brought back.

Hitler had him executed, although Fegelein was formally his brother-in-law after the “Führer” married Evan Braun on the night of April 29, 1945.

The uniform, which was bought by the Belgian Military Museum, was offered by the questionable Munich militaria auction house Hermann Historica.

It is about the jacket of an SS-Gruppenführer - Fegelein received this rank after the wedding with "Gretl" (in the photo with Hitler after the wedding his rank is still SS-Brigadführer).

The story that was associated with this offer in 2012 was: Fegelein had commissioned this uniform skirt after his promotion at the beginning of June 1944 - therefore apparently the month “VI 1944”.

There were already doubts about this story in 2012: it just fitted “too well”.

The auction house Hermann Historica, which can be traced back to an impostor named Erich Hübner known in the court, has offered similar alleged Nazi devotional items and often sold them for high sums.

Most recently, among other things, a top hat attributed to Hitler and men's silk underpants that Hermann Göring is said to have worn, as well as numerous supposed "Hitler" paintings, none of which is likely to be real.

Hübner appeared after the Second World War as "Count Klenau von Klenova, Baron von Janowitz";

the last verifiably real bearer of this name, however, Karl von Klenau, Baron von Janowitz, had already died on August 12, 1846 without a male heir, which means that the noble line should have died out.

With such a company history, the greatest skepticism towards all offers should be routine.

In the case of the alleged Fegelein uniform, the fraud can now even be proven.

Because a descendant of the owners of Petersen & Co still has the company's books.

According to them, a civil suit (and no uniform) was made under customer number 9885 in December 1946 - a year and a half after Fegelein's shooting on April 29, 1945. A respected tailor does not give the same number twice to different customers, and anyway the last customer numbers in the second World War I in the spring of 1945 numbers around 9500 assigned.

Fegelein also had no entry in the customer register of Petersen & Co.

"It is utter madness to buy a 'historical' object that has no verifiable provenance," says Nazi forgery expert Bart FM Droog: "All the more so when employees of a state museum do it for a company like Hermann Historica."

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As in most cases, it will not be possible to prove who exactly faked the alleged Fegelein uniform.

Presumably the real label was removed and replaced by a blank original label that was re-written using the old technique.

In the case of criticism, providers usually argue that the information provided by - often abroad, e.g.

B. in Russia - resident "consignor" can not be checked.

However, the market for such, almost always counterfeit Nazi devotional items could be dried up relatively easily: On the one hand, by informing potential buyers that they are almost always being cheated;

on the other hand, by enforcing that providers must be liable for the information they make in their catalogs and not be able to excuse themselves with vague formulations.

But so far, public prosecutors have regularly closed investigations against companies such as Hermann Historica or the similarly acting auction house Weidler in Nuremberg.

So as long as high profits seem possible with low risk, the business of Nazi trash will continue.

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