[Ron Wood]

Don has covered well the PTV stamps. Ed’s observation that “deathheads are from the freicorps generally and early 1919-1923 or so from what I have been reading recently” is probably pretty much on target.

To date there is no concrete link between the deathhead marking on Lugers and any specific organization. The fact that the marking is legitimate (although very frequently faked) is fairly well established. It has been attributed to the early Leib Hussar units (a theory that originally appealed to me…but pretty much ruled out since there is a 1st Lieb Hussar marked Luger that is not DH marked). It has also been associated with prison camp guards, but the link, I feel, is pretty tenuous.

My favorite theory, which follows Ed’s comment, is that the marking probably was adopted by a Freikorps Flammenwerfer (flamethrower) unit. The lazy “S” marking over the skull is thought to represent the pattern of the sweep of a flamethrower. There is absolutely no provenance to this assertion (as there is fundamentally no foundation for any other theory regarding the origin of this marking) but I submit for your consideration the following photo taken during the Kapp Putsch in 1920 Berlin. By no means conclusive, but food for thought.