Gents,

I thought I would show a  Wurttemberg Infantry Officer sword that I picked up at the Minneapolis Militaria show last year.

It is a nice example of a wartime iron hilt Infantry Officer Degen (IOD) that has a black finished iron hilt instead of the normally seen brass hilt. These black finished swords are somewhat scarce. This sword was made by Alexander Coppel but is not shown in their post-WWI catalogs as they apparently quit making the Wurttemberg swords after 1918. The sword has a folding guard with the Wurttemberg coat of arms and the grip is black celluloid with twisted iron wire wrap. The finger loop is brown leather and I had a proper Wurttemberg Offizier Portepee in black and red that I attached to the sword to complete the rig. 

Another nice Imperial German sword that I was happy to find at the show.

SARGE

    Very very nice ! Congratulations on the find and thank you for posting it.

Tony

 

Thanks for the kudos Tony.  Here is a better photo of the folding guard showing the full Wurtt. coat of arms.

I should also point out that this black paint finish came this way from the Alexander Coppel Solingen factory.  The typical way these iron hilt blackened swords, and KS98 private purchase bayonets, were made was to first dip the bare iron hilt in a blacking compound and you can see that dull black undercoat if you look closely at the hilt of this sword.  The black paint finish was then applied over the blackened iron so if the paint became scratched only the black undercoating would show instead of the shiny bare iron.