Fall 2026 Militaria and Aviation Auction
Lot 250:
Description
WWII German Brown Wool Short Wrap Jacket with Hand-Embroidered Silver Bullion Breast Eagle and Panzer-Style Cropped Cut Offered is a Second World War-period German short wool wrap jacket, tailored in the abbreviated double-breasted "Panzer" cut favored by armored crewmen and aircrew who needed a close, low-bulk garment for tight vehicle and cockpit interiors. No name, unit marking, or maker’s label is visible in the photographs, and no separate biography or provenance file accompanies the piece; it must be catalogued and valued as an unattributed period tailored jacket . By the early 1940s, German Panzer troops and, in modified form, Luftwaffe flight and armored personnel of units such as the Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 1 Hermann Goering had adopted short wrap-front jackets – informally termed Sonderbekleidung – that eliminated the bulk of a standard service tunic. Private tailors produced many variants of the cut throughout the war, and surviving examples are prized for individual tailoring and insignia rather than strict standardization. This jacket’s hand-embroidered breast eagle, worked in silver-gray bullion wire with horizontal outstretched wings above a wreathed swastika on a bottle-green wool trapezoidal backing, is consistent with a Wehrmacht Heer (Army) officer-pattern breast eagle rather than the swept, diving-eagle design typically associated with Luftwaffe tunics; given this, the jacket is best described as a Wehrmacht/Panzer-style short wrap jacket of uncertain precise branch attribution, possibly the product of private tailoring or a later assembled combination. The brown wool shell has a wide pointed fall collar, an overlapping double-breasted front secured by a full run of dark four-hole buttons with worked buttonholes, and a cropped, shaped waist with vertical back seams. The silver bullion breast eagle is mounted above the left pocket beneath a small mauve/horn-toned button, with a vertical run of hand-sewn thread loops below it evidently intended for a badge, clasp, or award, though none remains attached. Pebbled aluminum buttons and cloth tabs survive at both shoulders for shoulder boards, now absent. The interior is lined in a lighter gray-brown twill with two lower bellows-style pockets and a smaller chest pocket; cuffs are finished with a turned-back tab and single button. No maker’s contract stamp or size marking is legible in the surviving lining. No additional insignia, shoulder boards, ribbon bars, or paperwork accompany the lot as photographed. Condition is consistent with genuine wartime wear: the wool shows overall fading and surface darkening, scattered staining, and moth nips with small threadbare losses at both shoulder seams near the button mountings, one showing visible thread loss around the pebbled button. The bullion eagle shows expected age-toning to the wire work; the interior lining is largely intact with light fraying at the pocket edges. An honest, wearable short wrap-cut wartime German jacket whose hand-embroidered bullion eagle and surviving hardware preserve the character of tailored field dress, offered here for what the garment itself can support rather than an unverified branch or unit attribution.
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