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Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the complinents! I got lucky in that my first German sporting gun purchase about 15 years ago was my H Scherping 8x60S Mauser 98. I bought it soley on the condition and qaulity of the gun, I have since tried to research this man and his company without a lot of luck other than I have purchased some other fine firearms produced by him or his company during this quest. Iwill share what I have learned but it may take a different avenue of pusuit to learn more. Deitrich Apel
of the German gun collectors assn. has been a bit help and has approached me with intrest to do another article or display of these guns at the Beinfeld show in Las Vegas. These are not necassarily show guns, they are survivors and in the condition that I purchased them. When narrowing down to a Maker condition has to become a secondary consideration. One day I would like to have them all in restored condition or at least any flaws repaired. The GGCA is preparing to leave on a trip to Germany that I dearly wish I could make, but not this time. I have been concidering making an offer to Deitrich when he gets back, to contact everyone that I have coresponded with on Scherping & ask them to come to the show and bring their Scherping guns and knowledge to that show where we have the experts to look each of the guns & their markings over to see if that will help provide more answers to this firms history.
Here is what I have been able to learn so far with the help of Deitrich & Axel the GGCA technical director in Germay. Heinrich Scherping (born 1831, died 1913) became master in 1862, probably became Hofbuechsenmacher then to the still existing royal Hannoverian court which ended soon as a result of the 1866 needle fire war, but sort of continued in exile in Gmunden, Austria . In 1897 the busines was owned by the brothers Heinrich (+1929) and Johann (+1928) Eckebrecht. The company "H.Scherping, Hofbüchsenmacher, Hannover, Inh. (owner) Eckebrecht" still advertised in a 1937 Wild&Hund hunting journal.
Here is Axel's responce to query about the present location of where this firm did business. Sorry Mike, But there is very little hope to find Scherping's premises in today's Hannover. During WWII Hannover suffered 88 major air raids with saturation bombing, about 85% of the old city center being destroyed. Of more then 1600 timber built houses only 32 survived. The British night bombers needed targets of at least 1 mile diameter and within reach, so Air Marshal "Butcher" Harris (nickname not given by the Germans, but by his own troops, who suffered terrible losses. As a bomber crew, they had about a 50-50 chance to survive the next twelve weeks) had his priority list arranged in order of size and burnability, and old Hannover was very burnable. After the war Hannover was thoroughly replanned and rebuilt in the 1950s. The "Grosse Wallstrasse" is a victim of this replanning. As I could not find it in modern city maps, I found it in a small map in an 1895 vintage encyclopedia and compared this with the modern map: About half of it's line may be preserved as today's "Georgswall", if this is not the former "Gr. Aegidienstr." or both, the rest was replanned. So it is near impossible for me to find out where Nr.8 once was.
I then queried Axel about history on the Eckebrecht brothers history with this responce.
Those Eckebrecht brohers died in 1928/9 ! The further fate of the company is not known! The 1920s with the inflation of 1923 when many fortunes went under and a loaf of bread was several trillion Reichsmark and the black friday of 28 and the following depression led to the end of a lot of companies. In 1926 Stoermer of Herzberg closed his doors, Oberhammer is now a simple sporting goods store, Stiegele an auction house, Kettner bancrupt and so on. How do you think scherping and the Eckebrecht brohers actuall made all those guns sold by them and conventionally signed with their companies name? Please, read my article in the Almanach! I own a very fine Haenel M1900 rifle signed by Sackreuter of Frankfurt a.M. on the rib and all that I could find out about this company is a mention in Jon Speed's "Mauser Archive" as a major customer of Mauser! The bombings of WWII likely put a final to the history of he Scherping company, destroying the house and all it's contents. In the USA Hoffmann, Wundhammer, Linden , Adolph and so on turned out a lot of fine guns, heard anything about them recently? In Britain Beesley and Gibbs were bombed out also, and the Birmingham gunmaking quarter has been redeveloped. We are about 60 years late in researching! If you are interested really in the fate od the Scherping company, take a flight over to Hannover and delve into the city and state archives there. But I warn you: much of those archives was burned in WWII and in 1948 a lot more was drowned in a flooding of the Leine river!
For these reasons I will contact Deitrich after their return and discuss the proposal and see what kind of interest we can generate.

m4220

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