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Speaking of nazis, does it make you a nazi (or at least suspicious in the eyes of y'all horologists) if you wear a watch that resembles the ww2 german flieger watch? I mean, I only found out recently that my late dad's watch that I've been wearing a lot (a fortis flieger 24h) does. Just for the record, he hated germans more than anything.
damskodonny-
Good question. I'd hope not TBH. What are the chances of you meeting someone who both knows what it is and thinks it's weird to wear it?
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I hope not!
In my experience, when I have explained the provenance of mine, nobody has considered it Nazi memorabilia.
But now you've got me worried!
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I think generally (vintage) watch collectors see it as history that is interesting in its own right rather than any kind of endorsement.
Personally it’s not my area of interest in terms of watches - I’m not drawn to field watches or WW2 pilot watches or anything, to me it does feel like wearing one would be an affectation or some kind of romanticising of wartime, or playing soldier.
[art school bollocks follows, please feel free to ignore]
Without wanting to get too art school about it, I think there are always going to be those who separate the deeds from the man, right? Like those who separate the art from the artist. For me the visual signifiers are inseparable from the context, but then I’m gen X.
Postmodernism was about taking all those visual signifiers and deliberately re-applying them to new contexts. The post-postmodernist reality we’re in now is that those signifiers have (as a direct result of postmodernism) broken down to the point where they cease to carry the weight of meaning that they once did. Whole generations have grown up with a copy & paste graphic vernacular where basically everything is fair game.
Tl;dr: some people will have a problem with it, some people won’t, some people won’t understand why you’d even care.
Howard
Stonehedge
Regal
Font nazi status: confirmed