The War Merit Medal (German: Kriegsverdienstmedaille) was instituted on 19 August 1940 to recognize outstanding service by civilians in connection with the war effort. The medal was restricted to civilians - both German and non-German - and was awarded predominantly to those working in war factories.
The medal, designed by Professor Richard Klein of Munich, was bronze bearing the design of the War Merit Cross on the front, and the inscription "For War Merit 1939" (in German) on the reverse. It was suspended from a ribbon colored like the ribbon of the War Merit Cross, except for a thin red vertical strip added to the center of the black portion. When worn, it was worn either on the medal bar above the left breast pocket (soldiers who had earned the medal as civilians could wear it on the uniform), or with the ribbon only through the second buttonhole of the tunic. Since this was a non-combat award, the medal was only without swords.
After 15 May 1943, the award of this medal to foreigners was supplanted by the Medal of Merit of the Order of the German Eagle.
It is estimated that approximately 4.9 million medals were awarded by war's end.
The medal was presented in an envelope wrapper. The wrapper was blue with black lettering ("Kriegs-Verdienstmedaille 1939"), with the medal itself wrapped in a small piece of tissue paper. Envelope also comes in orange-brownish color with "Kriegs-Verdienstmedaille 1939" stamped on it.
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or merit:
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,—which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)