Kevin:

Have you let GGCA( www.germanguns.com ) borrow the Max Knoll Catalogue with his trademark in order to make copies? I think they offer somewhere around 10 copies for the lending.

1st let’s get Max Knoll out of the way. At some point I’m sure he was in the Journeyman program and obtained his brief with a fine example and by paying for his master party. There had to be at least one master gunsmith at each firm, so if Max Knoll opened his business in 1887 and consider the average/typical age of a master gunsmith was 24 years, then he was probably born in the early 1860s. He looks to have made the transition from gunmaker to firearms merchant pretty quick as by 1890, or between 1887 & 1890, he was at the reins or held a substantial stake in Leue(Heinrich who lost an eye and designed/made cross-over longarms w/ W.W. Greener) & Timpe(J.F.), who began in 1860. So from this I would say Knoll rode on Leue’s coat-tails and Leue rode on his uncle Heinrich Barella’s coat-tails. Max Knoll had some 10 Belgian patents from circa 1900 up till WWI. The only reason he had an address in Suhl was to source components, guns in the white or completed firearms. Post WWI, I seriously doubt if any German maker made the firearms they peddled and I contend that the whole of Germany sourced the Suhl/Zella-Mehlis area. So the model shown in Knoll’s 1925 catalogue was sourced from Suhl.

I’ve also seen several Krupp tubes with the a pair of stamps of “K” in a rotated “square”. I don’t know if it is a quality stamp within the steel type or what. I've been chasing G. Wilcke Hof-Büchsenmacher of Stuttgart for some time and think by the time this longarm was made that he was long retired or was a firearms merchant with a small repair shop. At some point he was a master gunsmith in more than likely 2 facets of gunmaking. If I recall correctly, I’ve seen some of his examples like a 10/12 two barrel set from the 1870s or early 1880s, so he was in business for some time and his heirs and assigns continued the business solely on his name as was typical of many of the makers. Several of the post WWI(or during) & prior to 1924 Wilcke examples I’ve seen were made by the aide of the “E.K.” craftsman. For now I guess the tubes to have been made/assembled or both by Emil Klett, whose family in the mid 19th century had at least one craftsman listed for each of the individual tasks necessary to furnish a completed firearm. There were at least ½ dozen master gunsmiths in the group, which were included in the baker’s dozen or so involved in arms production. But trade directories list Emil Klett as being active in the early to mid 1920s and if the combo longarm was made during WWI, the craftsman could have been one of the following:
Emil Kerner, Sr. or Ernst Kerner, and of course there may be others. The frame easily could have been sourced from Merkel, but I think it came from Greifelt & Company as it looks like a Model 96, with the horn triggerbow but I don’t see a cartridge trap in the butt. There was a Model 94 but along with Krupp steel tubes, it had a metal triggerbow. Simson is another possibility for the frame and August Schüler had a similar offering as a Model 26 but I bet he sourced Greifelt or Simson.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse