1917 Death Head

[jared427]

I finally got a macro lens for my Nikon so I figured I would share my death head with you. There are some different stampings on it. On the right side of the receiver where the eagle acceptance stamp is. It looks like the last eagle has an X on it and a horizontal nitro stamp. And the trigger guard has a different stamping on it also. Thanks for the input.
Jared

[lugerholsterrepair]

Nice shooting! Really good photo's.

[sheepherder]

I'm going to post the closeup of the chamber totenkopf for future reference...

Jared - It is requested that you post pictures directly to LugerForum...Some of our members (the more knowledgeable ones) are behind corporate firewalls that block PhotoBucket, YouTube, SmugMug, etc...and because PhotoBucket 'upgrades' their site regularly (for example, Flash) and anyone not having the latest upgrade can't view the pics...

[sheepherder]

I am a big fan of 'Totenkopf" Lugers...Is this a chamber stamp that has been displayed here before??? Not the gun itself, but the stamping...

(I'm assuming the Freikorps stamped rather than engraved the graphics)...

[pitsword]

Gosh,
I feel so ..well useless/worthless/numba thun a powndud thum. I do try to be more 'knowledgable", alas I cannot find a corporate wall to protect myself..and now this.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by pitsword

Gosh,
I feel so ..well useless/worthless/numba thun a powndud thum. I do try to be more 'knowledgable", alas I cannot find a corporate wall to protect myself..and now this.

Vince -

(I missed this first time around...)

Honest, I wasn't trying to single you out...I really value your posts, and look forward to your remarks...

...But you must admit, any of our membership who have written a book on such niche subjects as Luger lore must be accredited a measure of respect substantially greater than mere Luger accumulators...

(And I consider myself a bottom-feeding Luger accumulator...Not necessarily the lowest of the low...maybe the lowest of the high...or perhaps the highest of the low...All I can say is, there's a lot more of us here at the bottom than there are at the top...)

[Ben M.]

Maybe a ring to go along with this gun. http://www.ebay.com/itm/GERMAN-SKULL...item41619f9fe0

[CavScoutEurope]

Originally Posted by Ben M.

Maybe a ring to go along with this gun. http://www.ebay.com/itm/GERMAN-SKULL...item41619f9fe0

If that is a real Totenkopf ring then it is not cheep! Himmler felt that that ring was the highest award that an SS officer could recieve. Below is info on the Totenkopf that I copied from Wikipedia. With that said, I think that the info is actually good.

Use of the symbol as a military insignia began with the cavalry of the Prussian army under Frederick the Great. Frederick formed Husaren-Regiment Nr. 5 (von Ruesch), a Hussar regiment commanded by Colonel von Ruesch. These Hussars adopted a black uniform with a Totenkopf emblazoned on the front of their mirlitons and wore it on the field in the War of Austrian Succession and in the Seven Years' War.

In 1808, when the regiment was reformed into Leib-Husaren Regiments Nr.1 and Nr.2, the Totenkopf remained a part of the uniform. During the Napoleonic Wars, when Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was killed in battle, his troops changed the colour of their uniforms to black, with a Totenkopf on their shakos in mourning their dead leader (Other sources claim that the "Black Brunswickers" were so equipped while Friedrich Wilhelm of Brunswick lived, as a sign of revenge on the French.[2]

The "death's head" continued to be used throughout the Prussian and Brunswick Armed forces until 1918, and some of the stormtroopers that led the last German offensives on the Western Front in 1918 used Death's Head badges.[3]

[edit] Weimar Republic

The Totenkopf was used in Germany throughout the inter-war period, most prominently by the Freikorps. In 1933, it was in use by the regimental staff and the 1st, 5th, and 11th squadrons of the Reichswehr's 5th Cavalry Regiment as a continuation of a tradition from the Kaiserreich.

[Vlim]

Just a reminder. In Germany a retired gun smith has come forward, who claimed he applied these TK markings on behalf of a German importer around 1960.

So treat these markings with some reservations and remember that they start to show patina because they have been applied some 60 years ago by now.

[SIGP2101]

Originally Posted by Vlim

Just a reminder. In Germany a retired gun smith has come forward, who claimed he applied these TK markings on behalf of a German importer around 1960.

So treat these markings with some reservations and remember that they start to show patina because they have been applied some 60 years ago by now.

And beside that they look cartoonishly silly like my 6 years old would designed them.
That wasn’t German way nooo way.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by SIGP2101

And beside that they look cartoonishly silly like my 6 years old would designed them.
That wasn’t German way nooo way.

Somewhere on this Forum is a pic of a Freikorps truck with the same cartoonish skull & bones...

Let's remember, these were not skilled craftsman, proud of their work...they were bar room clowns; thugs who beat up elderly shopkeepers and who brawled in the streets with Communist demonstrators...

That even one of them could carve any graphic out of a piece of steel and stamp it on pistols & rifles (there are pics of the skull on rifles too) is remarkable...

As for Vlim's comment, that is certainly possible...but did that mechanic do *all* the death's head lugers, rifles, and trucks??? Nooo way...

[Vlim]

Norme,

Nobody is saying that the freikorps units, or others did not apply death head logos to their equipment. So that argument is not a valid one.

But, you are free to believe whatever you want. To me it is perfectly clear that most, if not all, DH logos on lugers were applied by the same gun around 1960. Caveat Emptor

[Norme]

Hi Gerben, I haven't contributed to this discussion yet, you must mean forum member Rich (postino). Regards, Norm

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by Norme

Hi Gerben, I haven't contributed to this discussion yet, you must mean forum member Rich (postino). Regards, Norm

We're like brothers; people always mistake us for each other...

IIRC the discussion here a year or two ago, there were photos in respected Luger books showing these 'cartoonish' graphics before 1960...

That deaths head graphics could be copied is a valid argument, although why copy such an amateurish depiction is confusing...Why not, as SIG2101 alluded, do a proper death's head & bones??? If Vlim's master gunsmith was responsible, was he copying an existing and proven death's head graphic on a Luger and wanted it to be recognized as the same workmanship???

...I like controversial Lugers...Someone find a Russian contract 1906 Luger with a death's head...

[jared427]

But what about the over stampings and the X over the last eagle? Also the X with a line thru it on the trigger guard?

[Ron Wood]

Originally Posted by jared427

But what about the over stampings and the X over the last eagle? Also the X with a line thru it on the trigger guard?

The gun was rebarreled at some point and had a Crown/N commercial firing proof applied. It is this same Crown/N that is over the last eagle on the right side of the reciever. I think I see what you mean by an X over the eagle, but I can't make out if it is an X or just an artifact of the striking of the eagle. The X on the trigger guard has a line beside it not thru it. You find several examples of Imperial inspector's marks with Crown over Fraktur letters having lines either below or beside the marking. It isn't known (at least not to me) what the line indicates, but some surmise that it is an additional mark made by a supervisor or an indication of a relook by the inspector.

[saab-bob]

I remember reading a fascinating thread on this forum about the TK logo. There was a picture of a WW1 German officer with a insignia that matches the cartoon logo seen on some of these lugers. He was reportedly in one of the flamethrower units.

Has any WW1 luger ever been seen that is unit marked from one of these German flamethrower outfits,with that same TK logo?
The little marking above the skull does look like a hose of some kind.
That marking is not on the later Nazi TK and the style of the TK seems different.
Just thinking out loud.
Gerben is right, you can believe what you want.
Bob

[sheepherder]

I just did a google/Image search for "Freikorps" and got hundreds of pics...I saved four showing death's head graphics (trucks, tank, armored car) and all have a 'balloonish' head, which is quite close to the Luger death's heads...

This makes me wonder when we got so spoiled that a proper skull & crossbones had to look like a pirate's flag...Was it during the movies of the 30's??? Errol Flynn as Captain Blood??? Maybe the Freikorps death's heads were the German embodiment of a skull...

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by saab-bob

I remember reading a fascinating thread on this forum about the TK logo. There was a picture of a WW1 German officer with a insignia that matches the cartoon logo seen on some of these lugers. He was reportedly in one of the flamethrower units.

Flammenwerfer!!!

[Ron Wood]

While I accept and even endorse some of the skepticism surrounding the “Death Head” (DH) marking, I wholeheartedly reject the blanket categorization of all of the Lugers so marked as “fake”.

I would like to debunk the circulating fantasy that all of these examples can be attributed to the efforts of an aging unidentified “retired German gunsmith” for an un-named German importer around 1960. This is an urban legend at best. Fred Datig published his seminal “The Luger Pistol” in 1955. There was no mention of the DH Luger in that first book, but in the revised edition of 1958 he has a photo and write-up of an example. Obviously the photo was taken or surfaced somewhere between 1955 and 1958, certainly well before 1960. You could chalk it up to the failing memory of an 80-odd year old gunsmith who forgot the date he forged a whole bunch of guns with a number of different dies…I prefer to chalk it up to sheer baloney.

As Postino has pointed out, the “cartoonish” insignia of the Freikorps era would lend credence to the crude execution of the DH markings on the Lugers. The creation of markings by rag-tag provisional units during a post war time of turmoil and rebuilding can’t be compared to factory applied markings or properly commissioned works by either Imperial or Nazi German government entities and should not be held up as evidence that it “wasn’t the German way”.

Before someone raises the objection that there is no hard evidence that these are actually Freikorps markings, I will say I agree. However, it is my belief that is the origin of the markings and as Gerben says, you are free to believe whatever you want.