Perfect reproduction of certificate for Paratrooper Loyalty Pendant (Fallschirmjäger Treukette). This is the most romantic and unique of Third Reich award certificates - it's been awarded to women od the 1st Paratrooper Division (wives and girlfriends) and it has 19 hearts on it! Is was nicknamed "sweetheart pendant".
Order a blank form, or a personalized version. Personalized version includes:
- name of a woman (incl. maiden name)
- signature of awarding officer
- divisional stamp
The history of the pendant is equally touching - as a thank you for saving the art treasures of the Monte Cassino monastery before it was bombed by the Americans, the abbot Gregorio Diamare presented, among other things, a small donation of silver. This is what the pendants were made of!
Details of how couple of German officers managed to save priceless cultural treasure from certain destruction:
In October 1943, an Austrian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, commander of the Divisional Maintenance Section — together with a German officer, Captain Maximilian Johannes Becker — convinced Abbot Gregorio Diamare to move the abbey’s literary, artistic and cultural treasures to safety.
Together with the abbot and community of monks, they forged a plan to evacuate Monte Cassino’s archive (80,000 documents) and library (70,000 volumes). Among them were priceless artistic works by Titian, Raphael, Bruegel and da Vinci, as well as various ancient vases, tapestries, sculptures, reliquaries (containers for holy relics) and crucifixes.
Beyond its own library and treasures, contents from two museums in Naples, the convent of Montevergine near Avellino, and the Keats-Shelley house in Rome, had already been relocated there.
Over three short weeks, the remaining Cassinese monks, Italian refugees and German soldiers transported some 700 crates by 100 trucks — some to the neutral territory of the Vatican (Castel Sant'Angelo) and its library for safekeeping, others to a castle in Spoleto, about 100 kilometres north of Rome.