Need help on DWM 1918

[Don M]

Steve,

The original marks as well as the cancellations on both pistols appear identical. It is pure speculation, but I'm beginning to think the marks could have been P.Rh. and that this stood for Polizeischule Rheinprovinz. You won't find a reference to a school with this name anywhere but we do know that a police school was opened in Bonn in 1926. This was about the date that the school names were changed from ones containing province names to ones containing the names of the cities in which they were located. Bonn was in Rheinprovinz (The Rhineland). Perhaps these pistols were initially stamped using the old naming convention and then restamped with the new.

Another point about the GunBroker pistol. The seller does not mention a letter suffix to the serial number (which I read as 8389 despite his reluctance to post the entire number) but the E/WaA66 and E/H proofs on the right side of the receiver indicate this is a 29 DWM that was manufactured in 1929 and would have an s, t or u suffix. This would mean that the speculative P.Rh.777. mark was stamped no earlier than 1929 and that, in The Rhineland at least, the old naming convention was still in use at that time. This is a bit later than I thought.