Pickelhaube
'bonnet', a general word for "headgear"), also Pickelhelm, is a spiked leather or metal helmet that was worn in the 19th and 20th centuries by Prussian and German soldiers of all ranks, as well as firefighters and police.
For this, he commissioned General Lev Ivanovich Kiel [ru], a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, to design the new headdress for the Russian infantry.
The new headwear was inspired by the leather helmet worn by the Russian cuirassiers, with the plumed crest being replaced by a pointed ornament in the shape of a flaming grenade.
However, its introduction to the troops took longer, while Moldavia adopted the Russian version of the spiked helmet in the same year, possibly under the influence of the Tsarist Army.
[3] From the second half of the 19th century onwards, the armies of a number of nations including Argentina,[7] Austria-Hungary, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Portugal, Norway, and Venezuela adopted the Pickelhaube or something very similar.
[6] The popularity of this headdress in Latin America arose from a period when military missions from Imperial Germany were widely employed to train and organize national armies.
[11] The linkage between Pickelhaube and Home Service helmet was however not a direct one, since the British headdress was higher, had only a small spike and was made of stiffened cloth over a cork framework, instead of leather.
Early versions had a high crown, but the height gradually was reduced and the helmet became more fitted in form, in a continuing process of weight-reduction and cost-saving.
The version of the Pickelhaube worn by Prussian artillery units employed a ball-shaped finial rather than the pointed spike, a modification ordered in 1844 because of injuries to horses and damage to equipment caused by the latter.
All-metal versions of the Pickelhaube were worn mainly by cuirassiers, and often appear in portraits of high-ranking military and political figures (such as Otto von Bismarck, pictured above).
The Überzug was intended to protect the helmet from dirt and reduce its combat visibility, as the brass and silver fittings on the Pickelhaube proved to be highly reflective.
However, the German high command needed to produce an even greater number of helmets, leading to the usage of pressurized felt and even paper to construct Pickelhauben.
[15] Beginning in 1916, the Pickelhaube was slowly replaced by a new German steel helmet (the Stahlhelm) intended to offer greater head protection from shell fragments.
[16][17] With the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Pickelhaube ceased to be part of the military uniform, and even the police adopted shakos of a Jäger style.
The modern Romanian Gendarmerie (Jandarmeria Româna) maintain a mounted detachment who wear a white plumed Pickelhaube of a model dating from the late 19th century, as part of their ceremonial uniform.
[18] The poem was part of his political satire on the contemporary monarchy, national chauvinism, and militarism, used aggressively against democratic movements, entitled Germany.
[citation needed] The spiked helmet remained part of a clichéd mental picture of Imperial Germany as late as the inter-war period even after the headdress had ceased to be worn.
