I will mention another "Peak" out there for SS daggers (maybe there actually needs to be several categories). Identified partial ground SS R�hm's are actually rarer, in my experience, than
unground SS R�hm's identifiable to those naughty nazis. I had the opportunity to acquire a numbered one with only the R�hm name removed that had been found by the late Bernie Brul� in Canada in the 1980s. Through the pioneer research of Ron Weinand, it was identified to
Untersturmf�hrer Johann Zur Brugge and with the help of Robert McDivitt they actually found Brugge still living in Germany! Sending him photos of the dagger, Brugge wrote back that it was his and was collected by his unit after the "R�hm Revolt" and when returned the offensive R�hm was removed and his SS membership had been engraved on it. He added that he had not seen the dagger since the end of the war when the Canadian army came through his region! You can read about in Tom Johnson's
Collecting the Edged Weapons of the Third Reich, Vol. VII further establishing a provenance for the piece. I found Brugge's Race & Settlement File in the National Archives that included his three required photographs and his handwritten
Lebenslauf where the handwriting matched his 1990s letter! So for the benefit of the doubters, haters, "x-spurts", fakers and trolls, how many partial ground SS R�hms, much less any SS dagger, do you know of with a letter from the SS Mann saying that it was his?
As a sidebar to the
Furst dagger, the original recipient went on to become an officer in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier (Galicien) Division and was killed in a partisan attack on a train on which he was riding in the summer of 1944. He is buried today in marked grave in the Czech Republic.
Now that's making history personal!
RossK
www.ssdaggers.com
