Thank you for your compliments!
And don't you just wish more of us were likely to see these cats in the fur other than those showing to WCF standards in and around Germany?
Thanks for posting the interesting history and photos of beautiful cats showing their distinctive type. in some ways reminiscent of the old Persians from mid 20th century, but these Deutsche Langhaar cats definitely have a longer nose and less round head than those Persians did even before the Persian type became more exaggerated. It is interesting to see how the longhairs diverged into these different types.
Possible outcrosses... what about Siberian?
or longhaired cats of Anatolia ? that would be going back to the original Angoras.
I breed & show Thai cats in TICA, from pure Siamese / Wichienmaat ancestry. Wow, this thread is like a meeting of the World Cat Congress. we have here represented WCF, FIFé, GCCF, CFA and TICA.
I'm so glad you love the Thai too. BTW my young queen who is in my little avatar photo ( shot when she was about 10 months old) has a German grandmother.
If you look at pics of longhair cats at the beginning of the 20th century you will see, that many of them had nothing in common with Persians, even not with Persians of the 50ies. In Germany they were called Angoras and you could find Angoras of all types. The only common feature was the long hair. Therefore Prof. Schwangart (he was a zoologist) put on two standards for two different types. One was the Persian, the other the Deutsch Langhaar. On the WCF website there is a breed presentation and on page 8 are pics of old Persians. Schwangart himself stressed that both breeds should be led to consistent looks and mixed types should be avoided. Unfortunately the pooling together of Persian and DLH after WWII meant a big step backward for the DLH. Nowadays breeders have to deal with the same problem. We need to outcross, but have to keep the right type. Maybe Siberians will be used for outcrossing in the future. They share the same genepool. The original Angora cats from Turkey are genetic distinct from the cats in Middle and Northern Europe although some of them have a nice type.
I love the Thai very much. They look like the Siam of my childhood. They are becoming very popular in Germany. Can you show the Thai already in TICA or has it still experimental status?