Help identifying Louis Perlmann knife

[whistler]

I've inherited this knife from my uncle, in mostly good condition, but due to the previous owner's demise (natural causes!) I cant ask him.
During the war he was in Canada so have no idea how he got a german blade.
It's about 13" long with an 8" double edged blade, in a leather scabbard, and has a louper stamp and "flamme" mark.
The blade is double hollow gound, fullered and has a swage point.
The handle has finger grooves and appears to be a hard plastic, almost black and has a couple of chips. To me the shape seems inappropriate for a stabbing weapon, and the metal ring near the quillon seems flimsy. The quillon curves towards the point one one side and away on the other.
If anyone can tell me more about it I'd be very grateful.

Please forgive me and feel free to correct if my terminology is wrong.

(moved from new users forum)

[MilitariaOne]

Greetings and welcome to the forum,

You can read a little on the manufacturer on post #99 here That WWI German & occasional Austrian Trench Knife Thread Basically, this knife is a generic Post-WWI hunting knife used for various field tasks. And yes, this maker's hunting knives are quite flimsy/cheaply made. I would not want to approach a wounded boar let alone a butterfly with any of that company's hunting cutlery:-) They also made SA Daggers and HJ Knives too, which if you conduct a forum's search with "Louper" you can view.

As too how your relative obtained it. During WWII and for quite some time after the war had concluded, a lot of war-souvenirs were coming back into various sea ports/military installations. Your Uncle's knife could have been war-time carried by a German soldier, simply looted from a residence, or even purchased post-WWII at a German cutlery shop. Regardless, it is not a stretch that your Uncle may have desired a memento from the war, was gifted it from someone recently returned from the front as a humble "thank you," or he won it in a crap's game. The further from the front one travels (typically) the higher the desire for war-souvenirs increases. As such, during WWII, there was an extant worldwide (yet, wholly unofficial) commerce in war-souvenirs' in order to funnel souvenirs to those that desired and were willing to pay/trade services for them.

For many service members, their wartime's service did not provide them with the opportunity to see action (i.e. war ended before they could deploy or they were permanently stationed on the home front), yet the desire to possess a souvenir would still be present amongst many in that crowd. Determining what path that knife took to get into your Uncle's possession will be a challenge to determine unless written evidence is forthcoming or a living witness with knowledge of that knife's backstory comes forward. That said, I do wish you good fortune in finding out more about the knife.

Hope that helps,

V/r Lance

P.S. I don't do valuations in case that's where this thread heads next.

[Anderson]

Agree with Lance, probably post WW1, 1920's era. My feeling is it may be a export knife of a type of which many Solingen makers sent to the Americas in that between Wars era. Here's a few photos, so you get the idea.



Note the "Carbine blade", narrow waist grip with silver ring band and bakelite handle. The two above ended up in South America.

[whistler]

Thanks to you both, a shame it's not more interesting or revealing of his history. From the chips in it I had a feeling the handle would be bakelite; I agree the flimsy handle is a poor match to the nice blade.