Porcelain eagle

This eagle is thought to have been given to an SS officer in about 1938 – the base is marked ‘SS 1938’. It features a swastika; an ancient Eurasian motif appropriated by the Nazi Party in the 1920s and associated with the idea of a racially ‘pure’ state. As the most recognizable symbol of the Nazi regime, the swastika came to represent fascism, terror, and the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.

The SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons) was established by Adolf Hitler in 1925 to provide for his personal security. Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS was given immense power over internal security and guardianship of ‘racial purity’. From 1934, the SS were an independent organisation in Nazi Germany – virtually a state within a state – and Himmler received authority directly from Hitler.

As Führer, Hitler had authority to act outside the laws of the state, and he used this to authorise the indefinite incarceration and mass murder of political and so-called racial enemies in concentration camps across Nazi-occupied territories. The SS lead the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ – the deliberate mass murder of European Jews – and more than six million Jewish people were murdered.

Te Papa collected the eagle in 2008 for the purposes of education and to remove it from commercial circulation.

References:

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2020. ‘“Final Solution”: Overview’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2017. ‘History of the Swastika’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘The SS’. Holocaust Encyclopedia.