SS-Ahnenerbe

[Dan E. Moe]

Can anybody give me some info on this unit?

Did they wear any kind of unique collar patches, cuff bands or badges?

Regards,
Dan

[Dan E. Moe]

According to this source, they used RFSS cuff titles. Is this true?
http://www.germaniainternational.com/ahnenerbe.html

Dan

[WTW26]

They wore a sleeve diamond displaying a Leben-Rune (there's a photo on the site the link to which you've posted). And they should have worn the "Reichsfuehrung-SS" (not "RFSS") cuff title after Ahnenerbe was incorporated into Himmler's personal staff in 1942.

[SS-Researcher]

On the same site one can find this photo:


Professor Hirt, occupant of the Chair of Anatomy at the University of Strasbourg. He is seen here in the uniform of -Hauptampführer (Captain)

Obviously the ranking is perfectly wrong. The man wears an Ustuf. collar tab and I have never heard of a rank called Hauptampführer (do the perhaps mean Hauptsturmführer??).
Can anyone please tell me more about this man? Forum search did do nothing Especially last rank would be of interest.

Thanks and best wishes
Florian

[WTW26]

His last rank was indeed Hauptsturmführer. He put together a collection of skulls of "Jewish commissars" on Himmler's orders, which was meant to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race. Naturally, a whole bunch of people had to be slaughtered, so I believe he was convicted after the war (he tried to destroy the collection when Allied troops approached Strasbourg, but failed).

[HPL2008]

He put together a collection of skulls of "Jewish commissars" on Himmler's orders, which was meant to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race. Naturally, a whole bunch of people had to be slaughtered, so I believe he was convicted after the war (he tried to destroy the collection when Allied troops approached Strasbourg, but failed).

No, he was not convicted. When Strasbourg was liberated by the Allies on 23 November 1943, Dr. Hirt - whose wife and son had been killed when his home was destroyed in an air raid in September - was not in town, but in Heidelberg. When the Reichsuniversität was then moved to Tübingen, Hirt took over the post of the medical faculty's Dean there.
With the end of the war approaching, he hid away in a hut near lake Schluchsee from February 1945 on, where he was allowed to stay by a grateful local farmer, on whose 11-year-old daughter he performed a minor operation. Realizing he had no future and that he would eventually have to face justice with just one possible sentence in store for him, he asked the farmer to get him a firearm, as he thought that suicide by slashing his writst would be "too cruel". He shot himself on 2 June 1945.

Source: Ernst Klee - "Auschwitz, die NS-Medizin und die Opfer"

[Dan E. Moe]

Thanks everybody!

[Acolyte]

Link to an old article about some of their activites:

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/09/12/36496.html

Regards,

Acolyte

[Max Williams]

Is this the same man? Here is the photo I have of Hirt. I don't think the photo above is the same person. I apologise for the explicit nature of this photo.
Max.

[WTW26]

Yes, I think it's him. The ears seem to fit.

[Max Williams]

Can't agree. The two are different men.
Max.

[Acolyte]

I have been unable to find any photo of Prof. August Hirt save the one already posted by Florian but I've been recently reading a book about the Ahnenerbe and it included the photo of Hirt posted by Max.

[Max Williams]

The website noted above has a genuine POW photo of Sievers, plus a portrait of Darré which is taken from yet another website and includes a very poor forged signature of Darré. I'd be very cautious about a website which uses photos from other websites.
Max.

[David Thompson]

The skeleton collection of Dr. Hirt
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=57522

[Georges JEROME]

Here a pic of Dr Hirt Dr of the anatomic institut of the Faculty of Medecine of Strasbourg in occupied Alsace.