Deaths Head Luger

[Don M]

I am not at all knowledgeable about the DH stamp but, for what it is worth, here is what I wrote to the seller about this gun:

"S.D. represents the Weimar-era Schutzpolizei (urban police) of one of the cities of the Prussian administrative district of Düsseldorf - either Oberhausen, Krefeld-Uerdigen or München-Gladbach. The theory that it represents the Sicherheitsdienst was disproven in 1980. If the deathshead on this pistol is legitimate, it was probably placed there by a Freikorps unit in the 1919-20 time period. Many of these units were taken into the Schutzpolizei in 1920-21. The format of the marking and the fact that this pistol does not have a sear safety indicates it was issued to a barracked Bereitschaft unit that was taken into the German military in about 1935. It probably served with one of the police battalions in an occupied country. Even though it does not have the sexy Nazi SD connection, it is still an interesting pistol with a lot of history."