- Joined
- Oct 7, 2017
- Messages
- 361
I agree that it's Edelweiss carved into the handle. Probably carved into this German knife by another German sometime post-factory or maybe, at the time, it was a more common Puma factory option. I have no idea. Puma did indeed carve lots of stuff into their stag handles but I haven't seen the Edelweiss motif before.
Edelweiss was used as a symbol on 3rd Reich medals and uniforms. The Japanese and Germans fought separate campaigns, for disparate ends, during WWII but they co-operated in a number of ways to try and defeat their common enemy, the Allies. It is possible that a German gave his special knife to a Japanese person as a gesture of goodwill. Perhaps he received the Japanese soldier's knife in return. Two guys trading their knives? Who around here hasn't done that? Pure conjecture of course.
Here's a link to a 1930 Puma catalog courtesy of classicpumaknives.com. It shows a large variety of similar knives on pages 2-6.
Both your knife and its sheath look proper to me. Note that in 1930 catalog the actual picture of a puma's head wasn't included in the tang stamp. I bet you could could narrow the date of manufacture if you found out exactly when that particular stamp was being used.
https://classicpumaknives.com/catalog-puma-1930/
Edelweiss was used as a symbol on 3rd Reich medals and uniforms. The Japanese and Germans fought separate campaigns, for disparate ends, during WWII but they co-operated in a number of ways to try and defeat their common enemy, the Allies. It is possible that a German gave his special knife to a Japanese person as a gesture of goodwill. Perhaps he received the Japanese soldier's knife in return. Two guys trading their knives? Who around here hasn't done that? Pure conjecture of course.
Here's a link to a 1930 Puma catalog courtesy of classicpumaknives.com. It shows a large variety of similar knives on pages 2-6.
Both your knife and its sheath look proper to me. Note that in 1930 catalog the actual picture of a puma's head wasn't included in the tang stamp. I bet you could could narrow the date of manufacture if you found out exactly when that particular stamp was being used.
https://classicpumaknives.com/catalog-puma-1930/