BACKGROUND: Hans Schemm, although trained as a teacher, worked in a military hospital during the first world war, and joined "Freikorps Bayreuth" after it. By 1923 he was associated with the Nazis, and founded both the "Ortsgruppe" in Bayreuth and the "Gau" in Oberfranken in 1925. In 1927 he founded the National Socialist Teachers’ Federation, and over the next several years involved himself in the publishing of several Nazi newspapers. In 1930 he was elected as a member of the Reichstag. In 1933 became an SA "Gruppenführer," Gauleiter of Bayerische Ostmark, and was appointed as the Leader of Cultural and Educational Affairs of Bavaria. He died in an airplane crash in 1935, after which many schools and other public institutions were named after him.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: A 1 1/2" diameter, bronze alloy badge, to the center of whose obverse is the raised, disembodied, profiled head of, as is indicated beneath, "Hans Schemm," and above which arches, "Haltet einander die Treue" (Hold one-another [to] that Loyalty). To its otherwise featureless reverse is crimped a horizontal pin-back device. Typical age soiling and darkening is evident throughout.

GRADE ****                             PRICE $45.00