Maybe someone can post a complete translation for the members of German Daggers.com
I am not a native English speaking knife enthusiast but German.
Anyway post school time I had the opportunity to improve my English language during my German Army service as officer cooperating with US Forces in Germany and some more tasks.
So please allow me to post a rough translation of the two information, which Thomas was posting:
Henning Ritter (husband of Beate Ritter, whose grandfather Kuno Ritter founded his cutlery company in 1932) updated his first response to Thomas.
While returning the paperwork being used for the first response, he noticed additional, more precise files in his archieves.
When Kuno Ritter started his own business as cutler in 1932, he could not register a trademark ‚knight‘ (the English translation of the German name ‚Ritter‘).
Other Solingen cutlers had already such trademark rights in different variations (by mind I know Wilhelm Cluberg ‚armored knight holding a sword‘, Weyersberg Kirschbaum & Cie. / WKC ‚a knight’s helmet‘, Ernst Pack & Sons ‚Ritterwerk‘).
Therefore Kuno Ritter used his complete name ‚KUNO RITTER‘ in capital letters along with the location Solingen to mark knives.
Along with the introduction of Hiterjugend HJ-hiking knives (by the Reichsjugendfuehrung / State Youth Leadership) and SA daggers (by the Bureau of Control for Party Ordnance) cutlers were being assigned consecutive „RZM“ codes.
Kuno Ritter was the third cutler and therefore being assigned by the authorities ‚RZM 7/3‘.
He was granted to manufacture and market service daggers, HJ-hiking knives, hunting knives, and boy scout knives unlimited all over Germany.
The Ritter archieves are not showing up an exact date when Kuno Ritter started to mark cutlery with the ‚KR-monogram in an oval circle, surrounded by the name ‚Kuno Ritter‘ and the location ‚Solingen‘.
Anyway it is supposed that he acted so, such as other cutlers did with their own trademark in an ‚double oval circle‘ for edged weapons, in 1933.
Definitively such oval ‚KR-logo‘ was being used to mark table cutlery and Bavarian Dress Knives in 1936.
Henning Ritter is dating C. Wetzel’s posted Bavarian Dress Knife with deer crown handle 1936-1945, possibly already in 1933.
Supply in raw material and lack of craftsmen during the war caused a stop of manufacturing ‚civil‘ cutlery and depleted stocks post 1940.
Other Kuno Ritter lines (?) of cutlery were being marked with the ‚KUNO RITTER‘ name in the 1930s and 1940s.
Post WWII Kuno Ritter acquired in Solingen J. Albert Schmidt Cutler & Wholesale Company in 1951, and started to mark all lines of knives with the HUBERTUS brandname/trademark.
regards
