Postby AG2012 » Fri Feb 03, 2017 9:27 am
The skull symbol of Memento mori ("remember that you have to die") was very popular through centuries (compare with Victorian skull and crossed bones watch fobs).
The use of “Totenkopf": most of the first SS were in the Freikorps, fighting for the preservation of German conservative values against liberalism and Bolshevism. The symbol of “dead head”, the Prussian type, was taken as a base. The SS chose that symbol not because they wanted to intimidate political opponents. In contrast, "Totenkopf" was considered to be a positive sign in Germany at that time. It was not a monopoly of the SS; the symbol was used in Wehrmacht, too. By 1934 the leadership of the SS created a new design of "Totenkopf" with different lower jaw for anatomical accuracy (which cannot be seen in the fob here, or impossible to execute for technical reason).
Regards