The SS Wedding Plate
Teller aus eiche Holz mit beschnitztem Rand “Ehre die Scholle die uns ernährt” zwischen Kornähren. Teller dieser Art wurden von den Führern der SS-Standarten.
An expertly carved display bread plate in oak with a message that tells us to “Honour the Soil that Feeds Us”, the script that is known to have be used on SS-Hochzeitsteller (1) (SS Wedding Plate). For wall hanging or for display on the SS-Sippentruhe withthe Julleuchter.
A SS-Standarte 46 photograph showing a carved wooden Wedding Plate.
SS-Obergruppenführer Fritz Weitzel describes the gifting of an SS Wedding Plate in his book “The Celebrations In The Life Of The SS Family;
“The wedding will take place in front of the Registrar. Until the start of the Second Reich only the church wedding was valid. Since 1875 the law demands every marriage to be acknowledged by the State. Even so many people see the church ceremony as the more important one. This view was encouraged by Officials, who often performed the civil ceremony in cold, dark, and drab rooms, making it a mere formality.
The Third Reich has a different view of the marriage. It perceives it as the nucleus of the State. In contrast to the former State and the church, persons who want to marry are being advised and tested for suitability to marry and genetic health. The State cares for the family, tries to remove financial obstacles as far as possible, and increasingly stresses the importance of the family.
All this should now be noticeable at a wedding in the Registry Office. There are already some local authorities which have a lovely room for the ceremony. In time Officials in smart uniforms will perform the ceremonies according to the edicts of the Reich Leader Of The SS.
Meanwhile the wedding of an SS Man may be officiated by any high ranking SS Official. The exchanging of the Rings should follow the marriage vows. The couple are joined as man and wife during the Registry Ceremony. The so called SS celebration of the blessing of the marriage smacks too much of imitating the meaningless church rituals and has to be avoided.
During the wedding feast the woman should now be accepted into the SS. The meal should be arranged in the home of the newly wed couple if at all possible. The tables should be adorned with greenery and flowers, with special attention being paid to the places of the bride and groom.
A special friend from the ranks of the SS should sit opposite the couple. Just before the meal or during its earlier part he talks to the couple about the value and regard the State and the SS have for the family and the importance of the preservation of the Folk. He should talk about the SS motto My Honour Is Loyalty, which now becomes also the motto for the woman. He should point out that as long as the couple keeps to the SS laws and do their duty, the SS will protect them.He then accepts the woman into the ranks of the SS and hands the couple a small gift. This could be a book or a picture.He also gives them a wooden plate holding some bread and salt, and two earthenware mugs. These gifts shall remind them to keep to a simple and clean life style. The words of the speaker should end with a Sieg Heil! for The Leader and the newly weds.Different groups of the SS community can help with the cooking of the food, providing of music, decorating of rooms, and so on. The groups range from the Hitler Youth to the SS Band and the Women’s Group.”
Ehret die Scholle die uns ernährt. A magnified image of the above SS Wedding Plate on a traditional c.17th century family chest, Weitzel. (1)
Teller aus eiche Holz mit beschnitztem Rand “Ehre die Scholle die uns ernährt” zwischen Kornähren. Teller dieser Art wurden von den Führern der SS-Standarten.
Below in an interesting related document. The document is part of an SS Personnel File to a WSS Officer (former SSVT), a holder of the Germanische Leistungsrune (GLB). The GLB badge award book is contained withing the document set.
Also the document pictured is the only reference I can recall I have in the file which contains the reference to the mans ‘Gottlglaubig’ beliefs.As you can see the Groom is Gottglaubig and the Bride is Catholic, so we have a non-Christian marrying a Christian. Not unusual but the only document I have which shows his religion.
To my understanding Gottglaubig is completely non-Christian. A source for an explanation as to the belief from the period comes from Martin Bormann . Quote(2):
“When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, by God we do not understand, as do naive Christians and their clerical beneficiaries, a manlike being who is sitting around in some corner of the spheres. Rather, we must open the eyes of mankind to the fact that in addition to our unimportant Earth there exist countless other bodies in the universe, many of them surrounded, like the sun, by planets and these again by smaller bodies, the moons. The force which moves all these bodies in the universe, in accordance with natural law, is what we call the Almighty or God. The assertion that this world-force can worry about the fate of every individual, every bacillus on earth, and that it can be influenced by so-called prayer or other astonishing things, is based either on a suitable dose of naivete or on outright commercial effrontery.
In contrast, we National Socialists call upon ourselves to live as naturally as possible — that is, in keeping with the laws of life. The more thoroughly we know and attend to the laws of nature and life, the more we adhere to them, the more do we correspond to the will of the Almighty. The deeper our insight into the will of the. Almighty, the greater will be our success”.
Also the document of course has a relationship to the plate it sits upon in my picture as the plate is a Hochzeitsteller or Wedding Plate of the style we see in the Fritz Weitzel book “Die Gestaltung der Feste im Jahres und Lebenslauf in der SS-Familie”
The SS Marriage Order (3)
Himmler’s SS Marriage Order
Reichsführer SS
SS Command – A – No. 65
1. The SS is a band of German men of strictly Nordic descent chosen according to certain principles.
2. In accordance with National Socialist ideology and in the realization that the future of our Volk [people] rests upon the preservation of the race through selection and the healthy inheritance of good blood, I hereby institute the “Marriage Certificate” for all unmarried members of the SS, effective January 1, 1932.
3. The desired aim is to create a hereditarily healthy clan of a strictly Nordic German sort.
4. The marriage certificate will be awarded or denied solely on the basis of racial health and heredity.
5. Every SS man who intends to get married must procure for this purpose the marriage certificate of the Reichsführer SS.
6. SS members who marry despite having been denied marriage certificates will be stricken from the SS; they will be given the choice of withdrawing.
7. Working out the details of marriage petitions is the task of the “Race Office” of the SS.
8. The Race Office of the SS is in charge of the “Clan Book of the SS,” in which the families of SS members will be entered after being awarded the marriage certificate or after acquiescing to the petition to enter into marriage.
9. The Reichsführer SS, the leader of the Race Office, and the specialists of this office [Referenten] are duty bound to secrecy on their word of honor.
10. The SS believes that, with this command, it has taken a step of great significance. Derision, scorn, and incomprehension do not move us; the future belongs to us!
The Reichsführer SS
H. Himmler
(1) Photograph of such a script and described as a hochzeitsteller in the book ‘ The Celebrations In The Life Of The SS Family ‘ by Fritz Weitzel of SS-Oberabschnit West, published c.1940
(2) Martin Bormann, Reich Leader, 1942, ‘National Socialist and Christian Concepts are Incompatible’, From Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933-1944, pp. 470-472, quoted pp. 245-247, George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture: A Documentary History.
(3) Source of English translation: SS Marriage Order (December 31, 1931). In United States Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume IV. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1946, Document 2284-PS [The History, Mission, and Organization of the Schutzstaffeln of the NSDAP, compiled on the Commission of the Reichsführer-SS by the SS-Standartenführer Gunter d’Alquen, 1939], pp. 976-77. (English translation attributed to Nuremberg staff; edited by GHI staff.) http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1505