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Nothing points to Wilhelm Brenneke here, but the rifle has some history. The Mauser commercial serial number 53186 shows, the action was made by Mauser, Oberndorf, in 1912 for sale to other gunmakers as "action only". Stock and engraving show the typical, common Suhl / Zella-Mehlis style of pre-WW1 times. BTW, all those "Original Wilhelm Brenneke, Leipzig" rifles were actually made for him by Schmidt & Habermann, Suhl. Though the original barrel with the most interesting marks is lost, the KM stamp with the D 264 registration number and the four plugged holes below tell about the original chambering and the history. These marks on the stock are German WW1 military markings . The D prefix and the holes show it was originally in 8x57I, .318" bullet. It is one of the scoped 8x57 Mauser sporters that volunteered in 1915 to serve as the first scoped sniper rifles of the Great War. Some years ago I wrote an article on these "Militarised Sporting Rifles" for Waidmannsheil!, the periodical of the German Gun Collectors Association, www.germanguns.com. If you send a PM with your email address, I can forward that article. After 1918 these rifles were given back to their owners. As the Versailles Treaty prohibited the "military" 8x57 cartridges in Germany, many such rifles were rechambered to 8x60 or rebored to 9x57 in the 1920s, hence the repair proof of the rifle. Today these hunting rifles with that war service background are very rare. This is only the fourth such rifle I know about.

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