ullles fur deutschland dagger- info please?

[Reid]

This dagger- long lost, forgotten since 1945, fell from the ceiling of my family's former home: a two story house contructed in 1937 by my grandfather (1889-1945)

Workmen under the direction of the current owners of that hous cut wooden lathe from an upstairs bathroom ceiling just last March. Down tumbled the dagger along with two allied war maps of France dated 1944.

The family- having owned the home since 1978, and having full rights of ownership on these relics, nonetheless contacted me the other day, May 6th, and made a gift of the knife and maps. They knew enough of my family to realize that Paul Welch, the eldest son, must have placed them up there for safekeeping upon his return from War service in 1945.

The blade is some ten inches long, polished steel with the legend "ulles" etc. etched lengthways.

Reverse side of blade carries a sylized round logo "RZM" with "M7/13" below

The handle is terminated in chrome plated guards. Small eagle/swastika applique on handle. Small round enamel inset disk bearing stylized letter "A" on the grip.

Painted steel sheath is chrome tipped. There is a leather loop of the same brownish color as the sheath. It has chrome buckles and chrome spring clip on the loop end.

Age had put a few dots of deep rust and some minor stains on the otherwise bright blade. The chrome plated parts are a bit rough and mottled but the plating is intact. Also intact is the paint on the sheath. Is this a very common knife as i suppose it must be? To whom would it have been issued? Can I learn the market value of this knife?

I suppose the greatest value in the itme is the long disappearance, and strange, circumstantial re-unification with the second owner's heirs.

Thanks for reading and thanks for any insights you can share.

Reid Welch in Miami Fl.

[DeBaer]

well i think the sentence on the dagger must read "alles für deutschland"
then it would mean "everything for germany"
dont know anything else.

[DeBaer]

oh, and the RZM number indicates the company which produced the dagger

your marking stands for "Arthur Schüttelhofer & Co." in Solingen-Wald (the city Solingen is famous for its blades, at least in here germany"

[Reid]

oh, and the RZM number indicates the company which produced the dagger

your marking stands for "Arthur Schüttelhofer & Co." in Solingen-Wald (the city Solingen is famous for its blades, at least in here germany"

the gothic script fooled my eye. Now that much more is clear, and I know the maker thanks to you, Sven.

Then, if anyone can tell me about that stylized "A" inset in the handle? I found a photograph of a much more ornate knife, different legend, but having in place of the "A", an ss logo. So I presume the "A" denotes some other branch of the military? thanks, Reid

[Reid]

Here, and thanks to the creators of this website was found the answer to my question. And so much more information. It is a later manufacture (post '36) SA (brownshirt) dagger. One of three million produced in all, according to
incredibly detailed information at http://www.germandressdaggers.com/

Thank you all- Reid

[Alexander von Loh]

HELLO REID AND GREETINGS FROM SPAIN!!!

JUST READ YOUR POST AND WAS VERY HAPPY TO HEAR THAT THE DAGGER WAS RETURNED TO YOUR FAMILY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. IT IS NICE TO HEAR THAT THE NEW OWNERS OF THE HOUSE RETURNED IT TO YOU. THAT IN TURN SHOWS THAT THERE ARE STILL PEOPLE AROUND HOLDING OLD FAMILY VALUES AND TRADITIONS. IN REGARDS TO YOUR QUESTION ON THE "RZM" MARKING ON THE BLADE, WHICH STANDS FOR "REICHSZEUGMEISTEREI", I AM SENDING YOU AN EXCELLENT SITE THAT GOES INTO DETAIL AND EXPLAINS THE CODES. IT IS: http://www.sscor.com/collectorinfo/rzmcodes.htm. YOU'LL BE AMAZED WHAT YOU CAN FIND OUT. LEAVE IT TO THE GERMANS FOR ATTENTION TO DETAIL. SO, HOPE THIS HELPS AND GET YOUR DAGGER APPRAISED. ITS VALUE SHOULD INCREASE SINCE YOU HAVE A HISTORY AND STORY OF IT. ADIOS FOR NOW........ALEX

[Reid Welch]

I had forgotten about this thread made two days after the knife was given over to me by
the entirely amazing, kindly Fournier family, who bought the former Welch home so long ago.

Here's a picture of the dagger posed along with two clippings
since found in the family scrap box.
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/9244 ... 214lk3.jpg

It's odd, all the coincidences found here.
At archive.org, I searched for any available broadcast recording by Drew Pearson just the other night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Pears ... rnalist%29

Why even think of him?

I was thinking of Fern, Paul's mother. Pearson was her first cousin.
I never met him, and am sorry for that, but, of the recordings,

there: one of the two broadcasts is dated Sunday, May 6th, 1945.
http://www.archive.org/details/WWII_New ... ew_Pearson
Pearson speaks of wanting to see Hitler's dead body, just to be sure.

Yet, that was the day PB Welch, my grandfather, died unexpectedly just
five hours before Pearson's broadcast.
"Judge" mentioned in the school's paper obit notice was my dad,
his nickname; 'sober-as-a...', bestowed when an infant
for his never crying or smiling.

And too, May 6th was the day that Beryl Fournier rang my home.

May 6th, May 6th, May 6th

"Reid, this is Beryl Fournier. We found something in the house not long ago, and we'd like for you to have it.
We think it belonged to your uncle Paul."

[Reid Welch]

click, then click on that result
to view full resolution




1034


"Mom, this came to me from a guy who got it off the dead body."

There are no ghosts in the attic. But if there were one, what would it say?
The summer of 'sixty five, a month or so after we moved in, the toys of we three children
were stowed on the head-level shelving of recently dead Fern's bedroom closet.
Plastic toys mostly, many plastic chemistries, all jumbled, commingled, in several boxes.
The United States puzzle made of "purely safe vegetable plastic", also the "Barrel of Monkeys";
you'd hook their curled hands, hoping to draw the lot as one string from the molded kitsch keg.

I had one talent as a child: that of divining the true colors of monks by touch alone.
Red, blue, yellow, green. I don't suppose I was psychic; I think it was the plastic:
each color felt a different degree of slippery-oily. And the States all tasted, smelled, of a peculiar tang.
Early plastics were not stable.

Downstairs at dinner the meal was quiet until from upstairs came a faint whump.
Judge went to check while we assayed our toughness—sawed mom's cube steaks.
"Fire! Out of the house, out of the house!", and so that was that.
Our inherited home was on fire. Well, that closet was, anyway.

The closet ceiling offered access to the attic crawl space. A trap panel contained the fire.
Dad slammed the closet door shut again, which limited the oxygen, damping the fire again.
Firemen arrived, sprayed down the closet and also water-fogged the attic "just to be sure."
I recall the ceiling light bulb now. It drooped the shape of an eggplant, thin as any whisper, it still lit.
I saved the souvenir in my prize drawer, amazed at its survival until a pig named a bank rolled over—broke.

The cause was never determined. I was the child firebug, magnifying solar, testing whether mineral spirits floated
inflammable in the laundry sink. Singed eyebrows and lashes from Judge said "yes".
My parents, I later learned, privately blamed me for the closet blaze. I did not do it.

Do ghosts believe in spontaneous combustion? The knife which she would not have in her house
lay buried in vermiculite mineral insulation between joists in the crawl space.
Uncle Paul, in 'forty five, at twenty two, secreted it there.

My room was separated from Fern's—from my folks' master bedroom, by the closet, and also the shared bathroom
between the two bedrooms. Two years, perhaps three years later, the large central portion of my room's plaster ceiling
pocketed loose from its wooden lath-strip support. I was out when came down the eight foot diameter roundel of whump,
breaking across my bed and making a hell of a mess. Might have killed me had I tarried,
that delayed result of the fire department's water damage.

The same time delay, in 2004, induced present owners, Beryl and Paul Fournier, to replace
1034 Almeria's bathroom ceiling. The Nazi dagger, as if it were a long embedded splinter,
would at last work out. It would fall to the floor in a clatter of rejection.

"I won't have that horrible thing in my house."

__________________________



Beryl's call came on that May 6th return of the day Fern Welch was widowed,

Reid, you should have this





__________________________

[phylo_roadking]

...6...6...6...?

Now that you've been re-united with it, are you supposed to kill Damian Thorne with it, or something?

On a more serious note, its a condition my father used to call "Smallworld-itis", a strange afflicition that seems to have taken over in the modern world from the earlier 20th century condition that gave some people the "power2 to switch off or on streetlights - the bigger the world gets, the more happens in it to more people...the number of possible different variations is finite so in effect diminishes, so things HAVE to start happening on the same dates, 'cos there's only 365 to choose from!!!....seriously, life moves like this, things happen, things cause ripples in the pool, and when the ripples all overlap weird things happen. If a FOURTH May 6th gets involved see if your local priest will do an exorcism, just to be safe.

[phylo_roadking]

Things fall out of walls and ceilings more often than you'd think....

Here in Northern Ireland we went through a period of urban renewal in the 1970s and 1980s, both to ensure equality of housing for all, AND to do the old Napoleon III trick of changing thru-streets in housing areas into WIDE thoroughfares or little neat cul-de-sacs....so it didn't bloody matter any more if anyone tried to put up a barricade

VERY frequently, in Protestant terraced housing, "kitchen" houses dating back to the Edwardian if not Victorian period, when the wrecking ball brought them down...old rifles tumbled out of walls behind baths and cupbaords. These had been the rifles smuggled into Ulster in 1914 for the UVF by the thousand - old Martini-Henrys, Steyrs, and single-shot Mausers from the 19th century bought on the open arms market. At the time I worked in the local forensic science lab, and held in my hands a Martini-Henry with Dutch initials carved on the butt....

The UVF bought rifles the BRITISH had sold on the open market after rounding them up from the Boers...who bought them on the open market after the British took them off the Zulus....who took them off the Brits at Isandlhwana - and the UVF had been planning to use them AGAIN against the British until the Kaiser intervened.....

In the same years, workmen refurbishing an old bank in the centre of Belfast took jackhammers to a wall to remove a built-in safe in the old manager's office; when they pulled the safe out...they found it was a curtain wall cutting off part of the office, and in the OLD back wall was ANOTHER safe! When THIS one was cut open...inside, wrapped and greased, were four .455 Webley revolvers and ammunition that had been issued to the manager and his senior clerks at the time of the 1918-21 War of Independence, to defend the bank against IRA raids!

In the early 1990s, an English OAP who was about to go into a nursing home called his local police station and said he wanted to hand in old weapons. They arrived at his house expecting to find a shotgun, maybe an old revolver or something.....

The man had been in the local Auxiliary Unit in WWII, the "stay-behind" elements of the Home Guard; somehow when it came to recalling all the weapons and equipment they'd been issued with in 1940 and after, his local team had been overlooked. Over the years he had looked after their "hide" but this had begun to flood, so he had carefully and at night carted everything back to his own house to store in the dry - a Bren Gun, Thompsons, Enfield and S&W revolvers, Mills Bombs....and many hundreds of pounds of old weepy Gelignite and plastic explosive and various types of timers and fuses.....

[Reid Welch]

...6...6...6...?

Now that you've been re-united with it, are you supposed to kill Damian Thorne with it, or something?

Amazing wit! Americans are so ucking dull by comparison.

Say, that's a great story you told.
I vaguely recall, a number of years ago, a British member of the T Ford forum related to me by PM, about how he was renovating a much-altered seventeenth (?) century country house.

They found a "priest hole" behind the fireplace.

But also, and this is where I get foggy, they found a pair of dessicated, apparently equally-old shoes.

What's with the shoes? He told me at the time his hypothesis, but now I've forgotten--some sort of good luck talisman, I think.
You would know--please explain if you can?

Thanks,

Reid

OH yeah, one other thing: I knew that PB Welch was in service during the first WW. I have, or had a yearbook from the ship he served upon,
USS Kroonland. Pretty obscure now. So, just last night I thought to make an internet search. Topmost hit. I clicked it. See photos. I clicked that and got here:

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-u ... 1541-m.htm

top picture, top row left: the grandfather I never got to meet in life

--
Serendipityitis. No cure possible anymore; you're so right.

[phylo_roadking]

Just this...

In the main shoes were thought to bring good luck. This may relate to times in the Middle Ages when footwear was expensive and the common practice was to bequeath your footwear to members of the family. The saying "Following in your father's footsteps" is thought to have arisen from this custom and implied the good fortune. Travelling carried with it many perils and subsequently many rituals were practised to avoid an ill fate. It was customary in many places before setting out on a long journey to drop an old shoe outside the front door. Throwing shoes after someone going on a journey was also thought to bring good luck. Confetti thrown at wedding is thought to be a remnant of this custom. Tying old shoes to the wedding car would give the strength of the shoe's character and bring good luck to the couple as well as chasing off evil spirits. Bear in mind too, at times in the Dark Ages, the strong smell of human odor was considered itself to deter the workings of evil. An old greeting to the bride and groom was "a happy foot"

The priest hole and the shoes may as such have been unconnected....except as somewhere to put the said smelly items!!!

[phylo_roadking]

Hmm, just thinking....aren't little silver shoes part of either wedding or 21st birthday symbolism?...

[Reid Welch]

Thank you for the research. I can't answer such questions.
As for the essay made above, it's a work in progress.
As such, it's in workshop now at a writers' forum
http://poets.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=100889#100889
and when I have the final dots done, I'll reformat and upgrade the copy above.


Life is interesting. I wish it would last.

R.

PS, afterthought: An elderly friend, to whom I told this story, produced a Hitler youth knife that he has had for some decades.
It's pretty rough looking.

I'll post some pictures of the object here soon.
I know, they are common as dirt, but what the hell, why not?
I'm a noob! All this is interesting (to me at least).


tanks shermans,

r.

[Landserstudent]

According to the old LTC Johnson dagger book, SA daggerswith the "Alles Fuer Deutschland" were the early type SA dagger. After the night of the Long Knives, those survivors deemed worthy to still carry the dagger had to have the motto ground off. Later daggers did not bear the ingraving.