Quote:
Originally Posted by Iannn
Kyrie did you ever find out why our barrels are like this? Assuming the same thing happened to yours that happened to mine.......
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No sir, and I frankly doubt we ever will. Purely in my opinion...
The 1920s were a chaotic time in Germany. The German economy was trashed and largely non-functional. Hyper-inflation made German currency valueless within days of issue. The naval blockade of Germany by the allies continued into the late 1920s. Something like two-fifths of the children born in Germany in the early 1920s would die from starvation or disease related to malnutrition before the late 1920s. Entire cities revolted against what passed for the central government and declared themselves communist, and these revolts were bloodily suppressed (frequently by para-military forces armed with heavy weapons left over from the Great War).
This was the environment from within which our two Lugers emerged. DWM and God alone knows how many gun shops (large and small) refurbished Great War Lugers for export, mostly to the United States. Laws, including proof laws, were obeyed or ignored according to individual sense of necessity.
This produced a large number of Lugers that old time collectors (like yours truly) lumped together under the rubric “1920 Commercial.” Jan Still originated a new system of nomenclature that provided context for some of the “1920 Commercial” Lugers (e.g. Alphabet DWM, etc.) and Still’s nomenclature has come into general use among very many present day collectors.
But Still’s nomenclature leaves an indigestible lump of Luger variations for which we still lack explanation or context. Your Luger and the one of which I just shared photos are a part of that indigestible lump. Everybody has at least one opinion about each gun, but historical records that would support those opinions are absent.
These are just mystery guns, created by someone, for some reason, in some country. Here is another one:
http://s295.photobucket.com/user/Kyr...mercial?sort=9
This one started out as a 9 mm DWM military Luger, chamber date 1917. It now has a ten inch barrel and is chambered for the 7.65 Parabellum cartridge. Barrel is not proofed, marked only with the number “124.” That number matches the last three digits of the Luger on which it is installed, but is not of the military or commercial placement or form.
I still refer to such Lugers as 1920 Commercial variants. That practice has been known to anger some of the younger Luger collectors, but so far I have not been visited by the Nomenclature Police :-)