I found some old paperwork from my great-grandfather. What is it?

18 comments
  1. Honorable discharge from the k.u.k Armee after 17 years of service (no campaigns) due to some sort of injury/medical condition.

    He receives a pension worth 224 Kronen.

    The document was signed in Lemberg, or Lviv nowadays. Finding further documents might be possible but it’s highly unlikely. He lived in Galicia, southern Poland/western Ukraine.

  2. its a discharge and retirement (due to invalidity) certificate, with an annual allowance because of invalidity of 224 kronen.

    the place where it was issued or signed was lemberg (now lwiw in ukraine), in earlier days it belonged to the crown of austria-hungary, the kingdom was called “galizien and londomerien”, which is now part of poland an ukraine.

  3. Nice one. Also he apparently served in “Lemberg”. That time it was part of Austria Hungarian empire, today it is in Ukraine called “Lviv” (Львів)

  4. As you may or may not know, german speakers have a weird way to read numbers. In english you would say “two hundred and twenty four”, wich in german would nowadays be read as “two hundred, four and twenty”. It’s sort of tough when you first learn the language, as you need to read some pairs of numbers in reverse order.
    The fascinating thing for me is that in this german document, the soldiers pension is spelled out as it would be in english “zwei hundert zwanzig vier”, which I have never seen before.
    I wonder when and why the reversal was adopted.

  5. He was honorably discharged honorably for beiing disabled in combat. Or after combat. So he was wounded. The letter states a sum of pension money a month. So he got retired from the army

  6. zweihundertzwanzigvier. Wann hat sich unsere Sprache verändert, dass wir zweihundertvierundzwanzig sagen? Fände nämlich ersteres wesentlich logischer

  7. It literally says:”The imperial and royal 11th corps commandhereby certifies that the _Feldwebel Mose Leib Pfeffer of the infantry regimentWilhelm, Grand Duke of Luxemburg, duke of Nassau, Nr. 15_, in charge of the homeland (the word “heimatzuständig” is kind of hard to translate, I think it basically just means where he served)_Ivanivka_ district _Terebovlia_ (in modern-day Ukraine) land _Galicia__31_ years old, of marital status _married_, has served through _17_ years and _2_ months _/_ days in theimperial and royal army _honorably_ and has been transferred according to the result of the superarbitration (a special k.u.k. word for a health checkup basically)by _December 1st_ 1907_ permanently to the position of recipient of disability pension.

    The disability pension fee in a yearly sum of _224_ crowns _7_ hellers (then there is a section that is crossed out)will be transferred (unter einem – no idea what it means in this context so I am not gonna translate it) from _December 1st_ 190_7_ _permanently_.

    The same (man) is entitled to _wear/carry the …. of the Grand Duke’s Lünenbürgischen Ordens (could mean Lünenbürgische congregation or lünenbürgische decoration) of the oaken crown_.

    ​

    Lviv, on _November 27th_ 190_7_

    For the Corps commander and leading general (followed by illegible signature)

    ​

    EDIT: The whole letter, relatively word-by-word (in a way that it still halfway works with English, at least) the … is a big chunk of the handwritten part which I simply couldn’t decipher well enough to be able to read it in German, hope this helps.

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