German Third Reich DAF Woven Souvenir Ribbon - "Dampferfahrt Concordiahuette" 1938

A woven silk-type ribbon badge issued for a steamer excursion ("Dampferfahrt") organized by the works community ("Betriebsgemeinschaft") of Concordiahuette G.m.b.H., dated 13 August 1938. The ribbon bears the DAF (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) gear-and-swastika emblem in orange and black, with lettering in a red and black Gothic script naming the event and organizing body. A gold-toned fabric tab tops the ribbon, with lettering visible on the reverse side that appears to duplicate or extend the wording seen on the front.

Such ribbons were distributed as commemorative favors at company-sponsored leisure outings organized under the Nazi labor organization, reflecting the state-controlled "Kraft durch Freude" style of worker recreation programs common in the later 1930s.

The Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), which replaced independent trade unions after 1933, organised workplace social life through its "Betriebsgemeinschaft" structures and the affiliated Kraft durch Freude (KdF) programme, which sponsored subsidised excursions, concerts, and holidays for industrial employees as a means of fostering loyalty and productivity within the Nazi state's labour system. Concordiahuette G.m.b.H. was one of many industrial firms whose workforce participated in such company-organised outings, in this case a steamer excursion held in August 1938. Ribbons like this were handed out as inexpensive souvenirs marking attendance, typical of the mass-produced ephemera generated by DAF and KdF leisure activities in the years before the Second World War.