First - sorry if i am in the wrong category - was looking around for a more fitting put couldnt recon were i should put it. I got my hands on some stuff from a family i know were a childless uncle died that had some ww2 stuff, they guess it was gathered in his active time, but well, cant be sure and iam always sceptic. But well, i guessed its british because it came with some canvas pouches with british stamps. Some kind of flag thingy? Anybody has a hint what it could be?
Are the two small characters flanking the design Hebrew? I think they might be, which suggests religion.
Thanks for all your replies! Was hoping would be easier ;-) Asked the family again, they think his parents/their grandparents told one time he sended it back from the african theater (but well, as is said - thinking and "i heard once" isnt very reliable) So jewish would´nt be very probable. Also by the crown and stuff i dont see a connection. Queens Crown? Is it distinguishable from WW2 area crowns? Not sure, but for me it seems like the crowns on british insiginia: I´am reading THR by the letters, could HR stand for Royal Highness?
Also Portuguese is a nice idea, colours would fit. Funny, nerver thought about it since i was so focused it must be commonwealth. But i have no idea how the man should have obtained it. Except North Africa and POW time in england it seems the man never left germany. Also Portugal did´nt participated in WW2 and was already a republic for quite a while - so the crown seems inappropiate (even though it was present on their flag - so perhaps?) Also i do speak portuguese and i cannot see what the letters should signify if its portuguese ( the r for rei seems not fitting, since as said they didnt had a king anymore). But perhaps i should try posting it on a portuguese forum as well ...
The square letter could be from the cyrillic alphabet ( eg Russian and several others), a hard "d" sound. There's no "h" in that alphabet, but there is an upside down "h" - pronounced "ch". Capitals - "T" as our "t", "R" back to front in cyrillic - pronounced "yo".
Strictly speaking they are neither Kings, nor Queens, Crowns. They are in fact Emperor and Empress Crowns. Many years ago I studied History, at Oxford, and this came up in one of my Seminar's on the Tudor's, and it was stressed to me at the time that it was important to understand the distinction between the two in order to understand how Henry VIII viewed this historical imperative and thus his position in relation to the Pope and other Crowned heads of Christendom. Essentially, a King, or Queen's, Crown is open at the top. It's the standard King's crown that we all know, a round band with little points sticking upwards (much like the paper party hats that come with your Christmas Cracker). When a monarch acquires a second kingdom s/he's entitled to call him/herself Emperor or Empress and as everyone knows William the Conqueror had two Kingdoms after the Conquest of England, so he and every English King thereafter considered himself an Emperor. Admittedly, one of William's domains was a mere Dukedom but aspiration being what it is..! In any event English Kings had always tended to view themselves as Emperor's after Alfred had amalgamated the Saxon Kingdoms of England so, in effet the English monarch, has always been an Emperor. Later the act of Union would add the Kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland thereby cementing the view that the British monarch was indeed an Imperial monarch. The wider empire came later and was merely the gravy on top. Lots of people seem to believe that Queen Victoria became an Empress with the acquisition of India but clearly that was simply not the case! So, an Emperor's crown is distinguished froma Kings crown by the fact that the top of the crown does not carry points, in the traditional manner, (although it can have them as part of the bigger structure) but is 'closed-in' with a domed structure over the top of the crown. The Emperor's Crown has a complete, semi-circular dome. Whilst the Crown of an Empress, is also closed-in but has a bow-shaped top (think Marilyn's Monroe's lips) Incidentally, the Germanic states were mostly all little Principalitie's and Dukedom's when they amalgamated, after the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, and proclaimed the First Reich. I'm not sure that they were, strictly speaking, entitled to call themselves an Empire on that basis, but then there was none more apsirational than the Prussians!
As someone has suggested, it could be Russian Orthodox, maybe part of the exiled church. Check with the Orthodoc Cathedral in Paris
