Posters Artwork Documents

Dress fire axe - short pattern.

Unknown provenance. Unknown artist.

Short pattern German dress fire axe. Date is uncertain - but high-quality dress fireman's axes were produced for dress use from the German Empire period up to 1939 at least. One of the difficulty in dating fire axes is that, more often than not, they do not carry particularly prominent marks or insignia indicating their date. Some who spend time In Here may recall that one of our US friends, some time back, posted a long-handled pattern, axe and hammer-headed fire axe of very high quality. This is a short handled type with ornamental axe head combined with a claw. There were, of course, numerous variations. Note the two rings, allowing the axe to be attached directly to a belt by way of leather thongs or fabric straps, much like dress daggers or bayonets. Some arrangement like this was common for dress axes, although they would not have been very practical for the more basic versions of these objects used by ordinary firemen. The fire services of Germany were, historically, organized as part of the police services. In Nazi Germany, the Fire Protection Police were a specialist division of the national "Ordnungspolizei", the main divisions of which were the Schutzpolizei (urban police) and the Gendarmerie (rural police). The precise provenance of this fine axe is unclear; it was offered recently for sale somewhere in Internetland. Best regards, JR.