I have a very bad sense of direction. If I say 'it's that way', you can bet 10 to 1 it's the other way.
Maybe it ran in the family. Because amongst my father's things I have found these. Five of them, no less.
I don't know what the little ones are. Brass, iron, lettering shows they are German, which means they must be pre-1939, probably a little earlier, from the family's tramping and mountaineering days. No 'made in' mark, no maker's mark, maybe the equivalent of a sixpenny-shop item. Except that the Ganzl family was deadly serious about its mountaineering ...
The other one is, of course, thoroughly identifiable. The patent Bézard compass. Popular with militaria merchants as 'the Nazi compass'. Well, its a fashionable expression, but the Bézard compass, very much more complex than its little fellows, was on the market and exportable before Nazism was invented.
This one is marked. Patent Bézard and the model number DRP 157320 on one side, and the word DIREKTION with an arrow through it on the other. The whole comes in a little leather case ....
This, too, will have been bought, presumably in Vienna, before Fritz's flight to the other side of the world ...
But why, Vater, did you bring five compasses with you? I hope there aren't any more in the boxes....
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