As a young boy in the early 70’s, I obtained a cheap repo of a Pour Le Merite from Unique Imports. Since then, I have always wanted to add one to the collection.

I held onto the Repo for 40+ years as a very very long term "placeholder" until such time I could own an original PLM. Today (thanks to next day shipping) was THAT DAY as I was fortunate enough to purchase this one. I would like to thank the prior owner. A class act who helped me immensely

I only had cursory knowledge of these awards having never really studied them in detail. So over the course of 3 days, I immersed myself with whatever info I could find and asking people many silly questions. I still have a ways to go before I even scratch the surface on the complexity of these awards. And some of the information I have noted below might be off.

This example is a WW1 style example (i.e. silver with gold Gilt) made by Wagner. (Prior to WW1 or 1916, they were all gold). My example is of 1920’s/30’s manufacture as a private purchase replacement or extra copy. This is observable, I have been told, based on the deep cross hatching of the chest feathers (enhanced due to the dies wearing out).

Wagner, I have read, was the official maker of "issued" awards during WW1 by order of the Kaiser. Further except for a very few early examples, all war time "issued" awards had the Baroque suspension ring versus the "pie" shaped style seen on some but not all of the other manufactures. The other war time manufacturers (i.e. Godet, Meyerbeyer, Schickle, S&L, etc.) were private purchase.

The PLM Order ceased to be issued in 1918 with the abdication of the Kaiser. All post WW1 examples are considered private purchase.

Anyway, here are some photos. (including my 1970’s copy )

(note: My photos were too large to upload so I had to resize them down. Hope it does not hurt the image quality.)

Click to enlarge the picture