1920 DWM Berlin Police Luger

[Ron Smith]

A 1920 DWM Ser# 1031 b. 1920 and 1921 DWM Army and Police contract Lugers are all in the no suffix, a and b suffix range, as per Jan Still's Weimar Lugers.

This one is in, give or take, 75-80% condition. All matching right down to the giblets. With the exception of the mag. A stick eagle base on a blued early tube. Ser# 5327 x.

Police Lugers are seldom found in pristine condition. Most saw rough service and were well used. Most unit mark addicts consider condition secondary. We collect them more for the traceable history. Just a debilitating affliction we have.








This one escaped the sear safety and magazine safety alteration found on many police lugers.










1920 is the production date. Not a "1920" property stamp often found on reissues.













ArA 4 Found on 1920 production pistols, verifies the 1920 as being a production date, and not the gov't property stamp.











The unit mark indicates, Schutzpolizei Berlin West, Command I, First Centuria or precinct, weapon #35. This has been X'd out and the new weapon #7035 has been added as per the 1933 directive.

My friend and member Don Maus has determined that it was originally issed to a militarized Riot Police "Hunderschaft" as indicated by the #1.

Hopfully he will respond with more indepth information. My police unit knowledge is still under construction.


Thanks! Ron

[Ron Smith]

I am taking the liberty of posting Don's response posted on Still's forum. Hope he doesn't mind.
Ron

Ron's pistol has been a significant data point in my research on Berlin Schupo unit marks that will be published in a two-part article beginning in the August Auto Mag. My ID of the marks based on that research is:

S.B.W.I.1.35 - Weapon # 35 of Hundertschaft/Berietschaft 1 of the Charlottenburg (W.I.) Abteilung/Inspektion in Berlin. The reason for the dual names is that the names of these commands were changed in 1922-23 at the insistence of the Allies so they would not sound so "military." The first name is that used in the April 1922 marking order and the second is the "new" name in use during most of the Weimar era.

S.B.7035. - Sometime between 1922 and 1932, the marking format for all Prussian Schupo units was simplified, especially for Berlin. In Berlin, each Inspektion was apparently allotted a block of weapon numbers within the overall range from 1 to at least 17000 and they assigned these new numbers in the same order as the old weapon numbers. Because of this correlation, I was able to determine from Ron's info that the block of new numbers assigned to Bereitschaft 1 in the Charlottenburg Inspektion probably began with 7001.

I'm on vacation and won't be monitoring the forums regularly for a while.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regards,
Don
donmaus1@aol.com

[Doug G.]

Ron, here is a 1920 Police that I have. As you can see it is S.B. 2029. Don't know if this will affect your friends work for Automag?

[Steinar]

Nice Lugers!
I have a police Luger also, its "well used" without matching mag and got these markings;

It also got black bakelite grips.. I prefer wood, so I'm planing to replace those one day.

[Ron Smith]

Hi Doug, that's a nice pistol. Don has quite an extensive data base on police pistols. Knows one hell of a lot more than I ever will.

Ron

[Don M]

Couldn't resist the temptation to take a quick peek at the forums while the grandkids are napping.

Doug,
Thanks for the info on your pistol. I don't have my data handy so don't know if I have that one already. However, I believe the mark is S.B.2029. The intermediate "period" appears to be a ding. It is much less prominant than the others. From the photo, it does not appear that there is any evidence of an earlier mark having been ground off. Is this correct?

Steinar,
Good to hear from you. I believe your post refers to the gun you sent me photos of some months back. It originally was weapon # 69 of the Charlottenburg Revierpolizei (Precinct Police). It and several others like it have convinced me that the Revierpolizei weapons of the Charlottenburg Inspektion were re-numbered beginning with 5151 and probably continuing through 7000, where the weapons of Bereitschaft 1 picked up.

[Doug G.]

Don, you are right there is no dot between the numbers. It does not look like there were any numbers ground off. By the way if you did not notice the frame is the long version. And was at one time a Navy frame that is now mated to a 1914 type upper.

[Don M]

Doug,

There is at least one other former Navy frame that ended up with the Berlin Schupo. I don't have the specifics right now but it got a lot of exposure on Jan Still's forum because it also had a strange set of unit marks, beginning with Berlin and ending up in the D�¼sseldorf district. Yours seems to have had a simpler history with only the later Berlin marks.

[Don M]

Doug,

It turns out that the pistol I referred to above is yours but I had some bum data. I have it in my database as weapon # 2029 and that there was evidence of an earlier mark that had been ground off. I don't have access right now to where I got that info. Thanks for posting the correct scoop.

[Doug G.]

Don, if it were ground on they did the whole front strap. There is evidence that it had been buffed near the trigger guard. But I cannot say for sure that anything was removed or not.

[Don M]

Doug,
If you're willing to pursue this one step further, you might remove one of the grips and examine the inside of the front grip strap. Often, the stamping operations left bumps or bulges on the inside. Of course, there should be such bumps under the current mark but, if they are more widespread, it would strongly suggest earlier markings.

[Doug G.]

Ok, I looked really hard at the markings. You can see another "S" to the left of the current one. You can also see other very faint markings on the middle of the strap. I also noticed while comparing it to another DWM that there was much of the front strap ground away.
I wonder if a Magniflux would show these ?

[Don M]

Doug,
Thanks for looking harder. It may prove helpful to know which of these guns was only marked once.

There was some discussion recently on one of the forums about some rubberized magnetic technique but I don't know anything about it.

[Dwight Gruber]

Doug,

Do a search on Jan Still's forum for "magnetic rubber".

--Dwight

[saxman]

"ArA 4 Found on 1920 production pistols, verifies the 1920 as being a production date, and not the gov't property stamp."
Wow. I have been looking for this tidbit of information for a long time.

[1911]

Were the green police Pre WWII in the picture? If so how long did there uniform look like that? That is a very nice weapon btw.

[Ron Smith]

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the forum. If you are talking about the Uniform colors? Yes, the book cover is illustrating Weimar Schupo. From what I can gather, I believe the gray-green uniforms were worn about 1923 on into WWII. Uniforms varied from Gray-Green to dark Gray depending on the unit and rank.

Ron