YET ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS LIGHTWEIGHT SABER, ENGRAVED BLADE

[Jim Thompson]

If nothing else, this mystery has provided some humility and affirmed the old yarn about family legends.

As it turns out, it's a pretty standard German/Prussian artillery officer's private purchase dress saber, made in Solingen, and almost certainly after 1908.

Turns out. some of the stuff from this estate sale, way back fifty years ago, had "French connections"...but the explanation was so weird it was basically nonsense.

It looks German made, and I wonder if it might even be Prussian ( "German" ) national. I am told it's a "Blucher" style etched or engraved, high grade "walking out" or "dress" artillery blade. I figure the relief was tooled up (there are tiny striations visible at 50x) after the acid work.

I had become so accustomed to seeing maker's logos on German blades, as soon as I did NOT see one, I presumed it could not be Prussian at all.

Indeed, it is Prussian/German, and supposedly pre-WWI, and I had wasted my research effort in another direction based upon a tangled and fictional story which I suspect the family actually believed, all those years ago.

Still, I'm so used to seeing maker's names and Solingen address material very crisply displayed on anything German after about 1890, I just figured, "It cannot be German!"

It's yet another 32" European style saber, light, with an engraved and etched blade. This one I have a "tale" or "yarn" on, which I suspect, like most family blarney and myth, MIGHT have contained just a smidge of truth.

Purchased in northern Wisconsin from a family of partially French extraction, a very long time ago, at an estate sale, and the story said the thing saw service with different family members in, they thought, the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War. They said it was a French blade, and inferred that some forebear had something to do with LaFayette. Even if true, of course, without hard corroboration, this yarn had no influence on what I paid for it, which was practically nothing. I knew, way back then, it had some military significance, as the detail on the blood-guttered (or "lightened") blade was very nicely done and spears, cannon, and arrows and other martial symbology. That was at least 45 years ago. I waxed it and kept it with anti-rust silica gel, and it's not deteriorated. I hadn't seen it for a long time.

As I bumble around for information--blades are NOT my area! Not by LIGHT YEARS!!--one notices a lot of French and Dutch items that look very like this one, but without the blade adornment, and mostly without the gutter/lightening grooves.

Have some photos on flickr.com. Best way to view: sign in with any old Yahoo i.d. and then navigate, search, do what one wishes with aplomb and magnify and so if useful.

The "2" on the sheath is a marking I've not seen before. The blade detail appears to be etching, then subsequently hand engraved, and may once have been gilded. The album of some 24 frames:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/albums/72157698174067125

Some individual images:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/42008928485/in/photostream



https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/28040750017/in/photostream/



https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/29037282448/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/29037283338/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/28040685607/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/28040685537/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/42008525485/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/15631192@N04/42008525425/in/photostream/

Blade is the more or less customary 32" linear, not as severely curved as the Hungarian Hussar saber I dug out a couple of weeks ago. I suspect this is somewhat newer than that old Hussar blade.

Surprisingly little damage, fatigue, or corrosion. Wax apparently really does work a lot better than oil.

I'd still like to know more, as I see permutations in these, and material variations. I have no literature, and it's too late in life to acquire any.

Now, back to digging through the unconquerable heap!!!

 

[horseclover]

Imo, Weimar period (1919-1933) Private purchase sergeants sword.

Post this up in the Bernard Levine section and Germania may chime in. Alternately, George Wheeler and Dale Martin at SFI http://www.swordforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?11-Antique-amp-Military-Sword-Forum

1. Nothing to do with the Blucher swords aside from a faint profile.

2. A P (or reverse p) and not what collectors would regard as a hussar hilt.

3. Blood gutters are regarded as fullers

4. There was nothing engraved on that blade, it was all done by an etching process. Still metal removal. Art repeated many times from an original. Kind of like a silk screened t-shirt or money making.

George, Dale and some others may have the catalog pages showing your sword. Like I mentioned at the start of my post, twizt WWI and the Third Reich.

Cheers

GC

then again````````````````````````````

 

[Jim Thompson]

I'll see if any of this works.

If Weimar, what might be the determinants? I presume such a blade would've seen use until 1945.

Correct?

Thanks.

 

[horseclover]

What was the question again? I mention it as a timeline. However it might not be.

Cheers

GC

 

[Jim Thompson]

Well, the one thing I'm sure of it, the blade came from the estate of a World War One veteran. However, that does NOT mean he didn't buy it in a store in 1947, either. Or for that matter win it in a poker game.

 

[Jim Thompson]

it's after 1908, or refurbished professionally between then and 1914 or so. And there is a maker's mark, which I cannot clearly discern. So that mystery is expunged.