Historical and Art Medals, Numismatic Books

Germany, Establishment of the Epp Freikorps, 1919, a copper medal, unsigned, helmeted bust of General Ritter von Epp right, rev. lion seated left, 79mm. Very fine and patinated, rare; in maroon fitted case [this slightly distressed] (£60-80)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, World Art Medals from the Collection of Dr Stephen Martin.

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Franz Ritter von Epp (1868-1947), a professional soldier, entered the service of the Royal Bavarian Ninth Infantry Regiment in 1887. In 1901-2 he was in China with a German colonial detachment and between 1904 and 1907 took part as a volunteer in the war against the Hereros in German South-West Africa. During World War I he had a distinguished record, being awarded the Pour le Merite and the Iron Cross (first and second classes). On 8 February 1919 he established the Epp Freikorps, which was instrumental in the liberation of Munich, being noted for its brutality. It was responsible for the murder of Gustav Landauer, the anarchist revolutionary, and for the massacre of its socialists at Greising, a Munich suburb. For a brief period von Epp was the military dictator of Bavaria, which became a centre of oppositional and Nazi activity against the government in Berlin and the communists. Among von Epp's paid informers was Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler, who had attracted the attention of his aide-de-camp, Ernst Rohm. It was through Rohm that von Epp raised 60,000 marks for converting the Volkische Beobachter into a Nazi Party mouthpiece, obtaining the money from the Reichswehr treasury and Bavarian capitalists. Von Epp's troop's were used by the Republican government to crush the communists in the Ruhr and he also exerted his influence on behalf of the SA in Bavaria, becoming its area commander in Munich in 1926. Three years earlier, during the abortive November putsch, von Epp had sat on the fence, distancing himself from the coup once it had failed. In 1928 he joined the NSAPD and immediately became a Reichstag deputy for the electoral district of Upper Bavaria-Swabia. He was also put in charge of the Wehrpolitisches Amt of the Nazi Party. On 9 March 1933 von Epp dismissed the government of Bavaria and was appointed Governor, a position he held until the fall of the Third Reich