That the Officer�s knot was used by senior grade NCO's, not just any NCO, makes sense to me and generally conforms to German Army practices. The leaders and staff of the SS Junkerschulen originally came from the German Army - which probably had a lot to do with how things were done inside the schools.
Manfred, I am a little confused by your comments. Do they refer to Himmler presenting a sword from his hand to the hand of some recipient? Or something that was presented in his name?
I think that photographs can give a good indication of how Himmler handled presentations in general. I know that we are not talking about the �Birthday Degens� here, but I think that they might be a good starting point for items that were unquestionably named individual hand to hand presentations. Looking at the pictures in Tom Wittmann�s SS book the SS �Birthday Degens� are fully inscribed and seem to have the SS Kulturzeichen present. Which I think would be expected on non Dachau produced items ordered/delivered to the SS. The same type Kulturzeichen as seen on the Solingen manufactured �Ehrendegens des Reichsf�hrers SS�. And a number of photographs of him physically presenting non-signed (I think a very reasonable assumption) examples of the SS Ehrendegens.
Signed presentations like the �generic� M1933 Himmler daggers are obviously another matter from an earlier time. However, there is a film record of him personally presenting the first 200 examples of the Himmler signed daggers. I don�t know about how the rest of them were awarded which could have been presented in his name (?). I�m not quite sure as yet how all this is related to your sword. But the photographs do not leave much room open for interpretation like opinions might. And I think are something to add to the discussion to provide some background. FP
