German Shotgun: Hermann Schlegelmilch

"H.S. - possibly Hermann Schlegelmilch of Zella-Mehlis who was a gun barrel drawer. Your longarm experienced preliminary/provisional proof in Germany due to the fact that it appears to be void of the 1st and 2nd marks signifying it experiencing proof in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Proof Conference of 1914 allowed countries to adopt rules to acknowledge each other's proofmarks although some countries like Franceand Italy didn't incorporate the rules into law until the early to mid 1920s. Your double has the rampant Bohemian Lion which is the mark of the 3 proof firing. The "NP" w/ sub. "W" is the mark of semi-smokeless or Nitro.

Maker, no idea just yet. It appears the maker or firearms merchant around Weipert purchased the components in the white from Suhl and/or Zella-Mehlis.

Kind Regards,

Raimey"

Comments

I cannot identify it but it is one beautiful piece.
--Stan in SC
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I don't know much about shotguns but yours, to me, bears a close resemblance to a Merkel 147E which were made in Suhl, Germany.
--Don
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Your inquiry was forwarded to us, and we looked at your photos.
They show a very typical German boxlock gun with side clips, Greener cross bolt and a doll's head rib extension on an Anson & Deeley type action.
The gun was most likely made in Suhl, the former German gunmaking center.
We can't identify the markings on the underside of the barrels. They might show when the gun was made and possibly who made it.

Sincerely,
Dietrich Apel
German Gun Collectors Association
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Your best bet is to go over to Germanguns.org or Shotgunworld.com forums and ask them. It's a beaut, but chances are high that unless it's a specific, easily recognized model all anyone will be able to tell you is that it is a German Guild pattern shotgun, hand-built to a standardized format by an unknown gunsmith long ago. For whatever reason, German shotguns and rifles were not maker-marked as often as guns from other countries.
--Vaarok
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Hi,
Go here. http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php These guys are nothing but double guns of all kinds.
Your gun is most likely a Guild piece. It looks kind of like a Suhl region piece. It does look very nice.
--dalee
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It is box lock which leads to it being very good to decent shotgun. Proofs are not German. They are Austrian. The barrels were made by Krupp, but that is not anything special since Krupp was selling barrels separately to various gun makers through out the world.
--ij70
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It's Austrian, not German.
The proof mark indicates it was proofed by the Weipert proof house between 1891-1931.
A closeup of the mark below the NPw proof on the barrels might be helpful.
You'll likely never be able to identify the actual maker...
--drsfmd
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This 16g double with German Krupp barrels was proofed in 1929 in Weipert/Vejprty, Czechoslovakia.
NPw .... Nitro Proof Weipert, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary,1891-1918; Vejprty, Czechoslovakia, 1918-1931 (?)
29....... 1929
These are common Austro-Hungarian markings which were also used post-WWI for a number of years in some of the countries that were constituted in 1918 when Austria-Hungary ceased to exist.
Weipert/Vejprty was an importand gun making center; probably the most well known maker was Gustav Fückert with his patented Kronengewehr (Crown Gun).
--Jani
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Interesting - I agree with Jani, looks like a gun built in Weipert in 1929 by the NPw and numeric string, and yet the barrels show the German Eagle-crown-over-S 'smoothbore' proof mark along with the Weipert marks without any other German marks visible in the photos.
If the complete gun had been built in Germany there would be more German proofs on both barrels and action. The lack of any German proof on the action makes me think that the gun was built in Czechoslovakia and used a set of tubes out of Germany.
Like so many of these pre-WWII guns, establishing just who made it is unlikely, particularly in this case where any German marks on the barrels are unlikely to relate to the gunmaker and the only marks on the action body are Czech.
It's always a wonder to me that whomever made a fine piece like this wouldn't mark it. Unfortunately common, but still a wonderment.
--Steve Meyer
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SM, in the day these guns were made, guns were made by the village/town gunmaker, of course. If you had the money and wanted a gun that is where you went. Everyone within his sales area knew him and knew his products. Signing would have been superfluis and ostentatious. I doubt that he ever considered that someday somebody in USA would wonder at his work; quite beyond his imigination. The norms for distribution of goods was vastly different from today. Hard for us to imagine he wouldn't sign his work and equally hard for him to imagine craftsmen of his skill level now vieing for global distribution.
--Rocketman

Hermann Schlegelmilch

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