Collecting Gau Badges

The Nazi Party administration was divided into four levels, Reich (National), Gau (State, Region or Province), Kreis (District) and so on through Orts, Zelle and Block. Every year each Gau would hold a ''Gautag'' or, you might say, Province Day. This was like a small version of the National Reichsparteitag. There were lots of speeches, parades, meetings and more speeches. To help pay the cost of holding the event, and to generally fatten the Party coffers, it was common practice to create a badge commemorating the day and sell them for a small amount to visitors. The badges were bought by virtually everyone attending and were worn during the day to show support for the party. At the end of the day many people kept the badges as a remembrance. Today collectors commonly refer to these type badges as tinnys.

Unlike the Reichsparteitag badges of which you can find only about 10 different, Gautag badges are varied and many. Some simple arithmetic will give you an idea. There were 43 Gau, and from 1933 to 1939 they each created a yearly Gautag badge, that would be 301 different badges. Some Gau created badges earlier than 1933 and some may have started later, I don't think there is any complete record. Suffice it to say there are several hundred different.

These badges offer some interesting collecting challcnges. A collector could decade to acquire one of each. This would be difficult because some would prove to be scarce or impossible to acquire and because of the lack of documentation he would never really know when he had them all. Another way of doing it would be to collect only certain Gaus or specific years, such as the last year of issue (which in most cases would be 1938 or 1939, as donation badges or all types were seldom struck during the war). One idea that I think would be interesting, would be to frame a large map of Germany showing all the Gaus and to get one badge from each Gau and affixit to the proper location on the map. Other collections could be built by acquiring only those made with certain design features (like eagles), only those made of tin, ceramic, plastic,l eather or whatever. The possibilities are endless.

Which ever way a collector decides to approach it building this type of collection can have several advantages. First: these badges are readily available and several different ones can usually be found at any militaria show. Second: there are so many different ones that the problem of not being able to add something new to the collection would not come up for quite a while. Third: most Gautag badges are relatively inexpensive. Unlike collecting medals or combat badges, which quickly requires you to spend hundreds or thousands for each new piece. Gautag badges are usually priced from ten dollars to less than one hundred dollars each, with (I would estimate) an average price of about twenty-five to fifty dollars. Finally when you get a good collection of Gautag badges you can start collecting Kreistag badges. I figure there should be at least 6,000 different ones of those.

Bob Treend, "Collecting Gau Badges", Der Gauleiter, 1991