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One more thing occurs to me on this issue. One of your sources, I think it was the Bundeswehr homepage, pointed out that there were many bearers of the Iron Cross among the early Bundeswehr members and leadership. I wonder: Did they wear the medal on their Bundeswehr uniforms?

The last medal recipients must have retired from the Bundeswehr in the late 1960s. There might, therefor, have been a period of more than 10 years when Bundeswehr members were in fact wearing the medal.

Micheal Prince (anonymous) - Sun Mar 16, 10:34

Yes,
serving members of the Bundeswehr were allowed to wear decorations issued to them during the Nazi period (including the Iron Cross and Wound Badges, etc.) so long as the decoration did not bear any symbols of National Socialist origin (swastika). The matter was regulated by German law passed in 1957.

The last Wehrmacht member to leave active duty in the Bundeswehr retired in 1984.

See:
www.documentarchiv.de/brd/1986/titel-orden-ehrenzeichen_ges.html

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetz_%C3%BCber_Titel,_Orden_und_Ehrenzeichen
mhatlie - Mon Mar 24, 21:20

The Iron Cross as issued under the Nazis did in fact have a swastika on the front, so it remains unclear to me whether any such medals were in fact worn by members of the Bundeswehr.
M. Prince (anonymous) - Wed Mar 26, 15:17

Iron Crosses issued during the Second World War could be worn by Bundeswehr personnel only if the swastika was first removed from the medal. In some cases the symbol was apparently replaced by a cluster of oak leaves. One account of the funeral of the first postwar German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer's reports that the pallbearers sported Kinghts Crosses, which is the highest order of Iron Cross. So I would assume that other Bundeswehr soldiers did wear the Iron Cross on their uniforms, though I have no source indicating as much.

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Sites of Memory

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This blog grew out of the sites-of-memory.de project. It features impressions and analysis of past and present memorial culture.

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The blog logo is a photo of a statue at the soldiers' "Brethren Cemetery" in Riga, Latvia.

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