Tore’s tuesday. Just a small thing today. A patriotic trench knife.
In Prussia patriotism and militarism were two important pillars of society. tons and tons of different Patriotic items were made and sold to civilians, and to soldiers. Christmas decorations, plates, cups, mortars (for spices, not the military type), silverware, printed items, jewelry and just about anything the mind can think of. Some simply made by commercial companies, some sold to aid wounded soldiers or the widows and fatherless children. During WWI this was big business.
This, however is not such an item. It was not sold as a patriotic item, but rather turned into one by the owner.
At the start of WWI the old ideas about warfare were still prevalent, the bayonets and rifles had to be long so the user would have longer reach than the enemy. Of course, fighting in the narrow confines of trenches soon showed that long bayonets and rifles were very impractical. They used the long SG1871 bayonet and the S98 bayonet as well as the shorter but still substantial S98/05 (“Butcher Blade”). In time the much shorter S84/98 bayonet was used more. However, in the meantime soldiers got hold of, or made, what they really needed: Trench knives!
Trench knives were made commercially and sold to soldiers, and were also in time issued by the army. The one that this blog is about, the patriotic one, is a commercially made one, double maker marked, but without the crown over gothic letter that would signify military acceptance. The other one, shown as contrast, has no maker mark, only the military acceptance stamp.
So, the owner has personalized his knife in true patriotic fashion, painting the hilt in the Prussian colors, black, white black. As a personally owned Eigentumsstück I suppose that will have been acceptable. The paint is definitely old type lintseedoil-paint and pretty old, so probably done during WWI.