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Old January 17th, 2023 #1
jagd messer
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Default Swords

Solingen

History of Sword making in Solingen

The Great Swordmakers



It was while clearing land for farming that the inhabitants of the Wupper valley first discovered that veins of plentiful and easily obtainable iron ore, were to be found just below the earth. Nearby beechwood forests could supply the charcoal, the numerous streams and rivers the necessary power. With such abundant resources, craftsmen could make high-quality, long flexible steel swords. That alone did not lead to high quality craftsmanship: the people of Solingen did the rest. Even King Phillip II of Spain, an Austrian Habsburg, flaunted a sword created there, as if to keep the craftsmen of Toledo in their place. The German town was greatly helped by the Knights of St John’s decision to settle in the area, and during the Crusades a chosen number of the local swordmakers would accompany these Knights abroad, enabling them to see for themselves the practice and techniques of foreign rivals.


By the fifteenth century, the reputation of the “City of Swords” shone bright. In Solingen the term “Kotten” does not refer to a shed or a cottage, as it does elsewhere, but rather to a grinding workshop operated by water power. These Kotten first appeared in the river valleys and on the banks of the Wupper. Contrary to practice elsewhere twin workshops – Doppellkotten were set up, so that hammering and quenching went side by side. A German historian noted that the craftsmen would take the iron ore “and smelt it in draught and smelting ovens and fashion it into axes, spades and weapons.” It was these “draught and smelting ovens” that enabled Solingen’s smiths to rival the steel refinements of Damascus.


Yet the artisans of Solingen were not the only craftsmen of their kind. Bladesmiths elsewhere, in Prussia as well as Württemberg, Saxony, and the lands beyond sought to emulate the quality and reputation of the Solingen smiths. Some went so far as to mark their blades “Solingen” when the true place of manufacture was as far away as Spain or Russia. For centuries, the most famous mark remained that of a running wolf, still used to identify blades made in the Solingen and Passau regions.


The pirating of the Solingen name was not a one-way affair. Some German bladesmiths, recognizing the personal reputation of their best foreign competitors, applied fake markings – work attributed to Tomas de Ayla, a prominent Spanish swordsmith, is one example. In some cases these forged blades were actually inferior to the German smiths’ usual product and may have been poorly made in an attempt to destroy the competitor’s reputation.


How highly the city’s work was prized may be gathered from the fact that in 1600 Pope Clement VIII presented the convert King Henry IV of France with a Solingen sword on the occasion of his wedding, while Louis XIV paid 28,000 livres to the Elector of Brandenburg and 40,000 livres to the Elector of Bavaria for their craftsmen’s swords – huge sums for their day. Royal families throughout Europe ordered their swords from Solingen.


The Thirty Years War (1618 - 48) sharply increases the demand for weaponry, forcing Solingen into mass production and creating intense competition among the swordsmiths. The guilds enforced stringent controls over production, so a swordsmith could not make more than four broadswords daily – although he could substitute six daggers or stilettos. Trademarks were de rigueur, and bladesmiths jealously guarded their skills. “The ability to produce an artisan product in defiance of another’s knowledge,” writes Frederick Stephens in his history of German swords, “was the foundation stone upon which almost all the craft guilds came into existence – closed societies which taught only their own, and some other chosen few, the skills and secrets of their craft, thus ensuring for perpetuity their labour, market, and wealth from their own skilled hands.” Members were put under oath never to leave the jurisdiction, and by the seventeenth century, three hundred specialist families in and around Solingen were producing swords.


The cartelism of the closed brotherhood cut two ways:.many who wished to become bladesmiths but were excluded left for Copenhagen, Paris or Moscow. In 1687 a group of English merchants lured nine families of swordsmiths from Solingen to settle in Northern England. This came as a devastating shock to the burghers of Solingen and nearby Cologne, who threatened dire penalties. The emigrant cutlers responded by marking their blades with the famous emblem of the Solingen wolf: they were not to be intimidated. The exodus continued: a group of Solingen Smiths established themselves at Tala in Russia in 1730, four decades later, groups emigrated to Eskilstuna in Sweden, Danzig, and Klingenthal in eastern France. In 1814, following Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia, a number of German swordsmiths set up in Zlatoust, north of Omsk. The blademaking centre they founded continues today, having evolved into one of the largest weapons-manufacturing complexes of Eastern Europe.


Around 1875 Richard Burton, working on his second volume of the history of the sword, came to Solingen. On notepaper headed “Hotel Feder, Turin” he recall this day “in the industrious valley of the Wupper,” which is quite enough to show the reasons why the foils and rapiers bearing that famous hand are so popular throughout Europe.” Solingen , Burton went on, “is a regular black town, one long street following the brow of a hill and splitting into a three pronged fork to the south. It is never clear, dark with coal dust like the faces of the men.” When Burton passed through, the Gua (district) had about 30,000 inhabitants, the town itself 14,000. ”They are independent in manner,” he observed. “The men drink hard and are handy with their knives.”


The city had not yet been touched by the Industrial Revolution. “The hammering and forging are utterly ignorant of progress,” Burton noted, with a clear contempt for the distasteful modern affection. “if more machinery were it would soon lose rank.” This statement is doubly surprising, first because water rather than oil was being used, and second because the advent of the steam engine had led to the creation of countless new engines, and by the time of Burton’s visit the arduous job of forging a blade over an anvil by hand was already yielding to mechanically driven hammers. Many blade-smiths disliked and distrusted the new machines, but such innovation provided opportunities for mass production that could not be avoided.


Business in Solingen was nevertheless brisk. The extension of trade, as well as the demands of war, meant that orders poured in from around the world, including the United States, for swords and bayonets. In 1847 a mechanism for rolling blades from long strips of steel was introduced, a painful blow to the old masters. Within the year, the sword-smiths had given up their traditional proof marks and substituted the trademarks of the newly consolidated firms. Solingen’s artisans had finally been recruited to factory work.


However, after 1900 craftsmen once more came into their own, as diplomats, statesmen, and military officers requested individually made arms. Solingen flowered again, into a prosperity that lasted almost two decades. The total defeat of the Reich in 1918 brought ruin on the town. Attempts were made to convert the factories to such items as scissors and tableware, but these contributed little. Solingen would lie dormant and decaying until Adolf Hitler came to power. In 1933 a group of city fathers went to Berlin to petition the Führer. Not only did he agree to see them, but it was at their first meeting that the idea of daggers for servants of the Third Reich was proposed.


Hitler was keen to lift Germany from the economic depression gripping the developed world and to remind his countrymen of their past glories. A professor from Solingen’s Industrial Trade School designed the prototype weapon for the SA and SS, and on February 6, 1934, the first order was placed. Soon weapons fever was rampant: nearly every Nazi Party and military organization wanted its own identifying brand of dagger and sword.


Led by Hermann Göring, who was seldom seen without an edged weapon of some fashion in his belt, the new German idolized the sword. One Solingen firm alone produced seventy thousand swords and daggers between 1938 and 1941, just for naval use (and the German Navy was principally a submarine force) – still only a small proportion of its overall output for the period.


The last three years of the war saw yet another reversal as Allied bombs shattered Solingen. The Reich’s worsening position meant that even skilled craftsmen were being called up. Copper shortages forced the substitution of aluminium in pommels, crossguards, and scabbard fittings, while a diminished workforce made inferior products. With war’s end, hundreds of thousands of Nazi swords were removed from Solingen’s factories by Allied soldiers, who drove tanks back and forth over them.


One sunny October morning two years ago, I visited Solingen. The valleys leading into the town were bathed in a light haze, and the falling leaves imparted a melancholy beauty. It could not have been more different than Toledo, perched defiantly atop of a huge hill as if challenging its enemies to besiege it. Toledo still looks like a proud medieval fortress, but Solingen bears little trace of its famous past. Now even “Old Frit” the affectionate nickname given to its emblematic statue of a swordsmith, has been removed from the marketplace of the old town, where it stood for centuries. The one factory that I visited was little more than a couple of rooms devoted to making steelware for domestic use: if I had been hoping to find glittering blades to rival those of earlier times, I was disappointed.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.8YRML5...=0&o=5&pid=1.7

Old Fritz, swordsmith, Solingen


The author of the book I was reading on Nazi weaponry concluded sadly, “Since the demand today for edged weapons is so limited, (Solingen’s) firms are turning more and more towards the production of cutlery and tableware as a fulltime industry. It is extremely doubtful that the Solingen machinery for producing swords and daggers will ever again hum at the high pitch attained during the Third Reich.” Only an obsessive sword collector, I reflected, would regard that as a calamity.


After the war a ban on making or possessing swords was imposed on Japan as well as Germany and lasted seven years – effectively until the Americans left in 1952.



By the SWORD Richard Cohen

P 116 - 121

17 I 2023.



Solingen, Germany - The Centuries-Old City of …


https://benjaminarms.com/.../famous-...aking-cities/…
The city has been known for it’s blade making prowess for centuries and was given the title “The City of Blades.” Highly skilled knife and swordmakers perfected their craft over the centuries and organized into powerful companies …
 
Old January 21st, 2023 #2
Ray Allan
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Old January 24th, 2023 #3
jagd messer
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Default British Sword Making

History of British Sword Making


British Sword Makers


The history of British sword manufacture is a tale characterised by a series of economic highs and lows, due in part to the changing necessities of military conflict, government intransigence, and an on-going “war” conducted by British sword makers, against a flood of cheap, (sometimes inferior) foreign imports, most notably from Solingen, Germany.


Price Competition

For most of the nineteenth century, this inability to compete on price with Solingen ensured the steady decline of British sword making and the resulting emergence of only a small number of companies who were able to trade more on quality than price. The most notable of these was The Wilkinson Sword Company. Henry Wilkinson never claimed that he could produce a cheaper sword, but through rigorous testing procedures and innovative blade design, he could certainly rightly claim that his swords were of world-beating standard. In 1900, the German sword trade could sell an officer’s sword to a London retailer for 21 shillings (£1.05), who would then sell on the sword at 30 shillings (£1.50). If you wanted to buy a Wilkinson “Best proved sword, with a patent solid tang”, a customer would be asked to pay 5 guineas (£5.25). The price difference is staggering but it is a testament to the high regard in which these swords were held by contemporaries that they were still purchased in such large numbers.


Combat Reliability


It took many years for the military authorities to grudgingly accept that if you paid a little more for better quality, home manufactured blades, then the critical issue of combat reliability could be properly addressed. The axiom that you get exactly what you pay for could have been etched, literally, on the blades of many swords purchased by the British Army. Indeed, there were times when swords supplied to the British Army were regarded as practically useless when wielded in the heat of battle. Reports from both officers and men detail constant service problems with broken and bent blades that, in some circumstances, led directly to the unnecessary deaths of servicemen. The actual quality and design of swords carried by British soldiers had always been a bone of contention and, in typically British fashion, led to the establishment of numerous Committees of Enquiry, following a series of very public sword scandals.


Feast and Famine

British sword makers and their myriad suppliers lived through frequent periods of economic feast or famine. The availability of regular work was particularly erratic and many companies went in and out of business with alarming regularity. The Napoleonic Wars of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought some stability. It became a temporary boom time for sword making and its allied trades, with government contracts placed for thousands of swords, bayonets and guns. The city of Birmingham was a major beneficiary of this government contracts placed for thousands of swords, bayonets and guns.


Sword Workshops

Individual craftsmen and women (mainly anonymous) were the real sword makers. In many cases, they provided the finished parts to the “sword maker” who then simply assembled and sold on to the retailer the finished sword. During the early 1800’s, countless small workshops and homes turned out blades, grips, scabbards and mounts. Their identities will probably never be known as the “sword maker” or retailer invariably stamped the completed sword with his own company name, but their superb skill and artistry is thankfully passed down to us in the fine pieces that are now available to the collector.


Cut or Thrust?

It should also be remembered that the history of British sword making was driven by great theoretical debate and argument. The fundamental question that ran through the design and development of British swords, namely that of whether a military sword should be primarily one of cut or thrust, rumbled on for many years. It actually took over one hundred years of trial (and mainly error!) for this debate to be properly satisfied. By then, the conclusion, that a thrusting sword was the most effective, had become completely irrelevant in a new world of machine guns and static warfare.


Origins of British Sword Manufacture

Let us first take a look at the historical origins of indigenous British sword manufacture.

The recognition of sword-making in Britain as a distinct trade can be traced back as far as 1415, when The Worshipful Company of Cutlers of London received Royal Assent. The metal producing area of Solingen, Germany, followed this trend later in the century when the ruling council in Cologne granted permission for a guild of swordsmith and cutlers to be established. The sixteenth century saw the genesis of a more organised method of sword manufacture in Britain. Henry VIII initiated a thriving armoury at Greenwich, London. It turned out some remarkable pieces of armour and edged weaponry and these can still be seen today. Even at this very early stage of the story we run into the interminable thorn in the side of British sword manufacturers. This concerned the use of imported skilled German craftsmen from Solingen and Passau, who were employed in King Henry’s armoury, due to a severe shortage of skilled English workers. Although it might seem highly contradictory, at least German workers were producing “English” swords in England, rather than in their own homeland.


For the next three hundred years there would be bitter competition between German sword makers and the small English manufacturers, to win the custom of sword buyers (both civilian and military) within Britain. It was a competition in which Germany would be the ultimate victor.


German Immigrant Sword Makers and Hounslow


Following the influx of German Protestants into England due to Catholic religious persecution in the 1600‘s, a number of skilled German metal workers helped to establish a new sword factory in Hounslow (near London), in 1620.


Shotley Bridge Sword Makers

The Hollow Sword Blade Company was also formed in 1690 at a new northern factory in Shotley Bridge, County Durham. The choice of location was due to the rich iron ore deposits found in the local area, the fast flowing River Derwent that was ideal for tempering blades, and also the fact that its remoteness was handy in keeping the secrets of manufacture away from prying eyes, e.g. competitors. An interesting local story highlights the pride with which these newcomers viewed their enterprise.

There is a story that one of the Shotley sword-making fraternity, a certain William Oley, was once challenged by two other sword makers to see who could make the sharpest and most resilient sword. On the day of the challenge, the three men turned up, but it seemed that Oley had forgotten to bring an example of his work. The two other sword makers, assuming that he had been unable to make a sword of a suitable standard, began to boastfully demonstrate the strength, sharpness and resiliency of their workpieces.

Eventually their curiosity got the better of them and they asked Oley why he had not brought a sword. With a mischievous grin, Oley removed his stiff hat, to reveal a super-resilient sword, coiled up inside. He challenged the other two sword makers to remove the sword from the hat, but their attempts nearly resulted in the loss of their fingers. In the end the sword could only be removed by means of a vice. For strength, sharpness and resiliency Oley’s sword was undoubtedly the winner.”


One of the Hounslow founders, Benjamin Stone, confidently declared that he had “perfected the art of blade making”. His swords were “as good and cheap as any to be found in the Christian world.”


Hollow-Ground or “Colichemarde” Blades

These boastful claims were soon to suffer ridicule when it was found that Hounslow and Shotley Bridge could not reproduce the quality of manufacture that was coming out of Germany, particularly in the lucrative area of hollow-ground or ‘colichemarde’ blades used in smallswords, which had become the standard dress arm for both gentleman and military officers. Solingen had also developed specialist machinery for the production of these blades, which involved rolling out the hollows of the blade. It was a revolutionary technique and cut down dramatically the standard dress arm for both gentleman and military officers. Solingen had also developed specialist machinery for the production of these blades, which involved rolling out the hollows of the blade. Both Hounslow and Shotley Bridge had nothing like this and could only manufacture by labourious hand crafting of the blade. Rate of production was tiny compared with the established German sword guilds.


Despite the imposition of heavy taxes by the British Crown on the importation of foreign blades in order to stimulate home production, Hounslow and Shotley were only able to produce simple, flat bladed weapons, rather than the more sophisticated swords being manufactured in Germany, and it soon faded into obscurity. A typical “Hounslow Hanger” of the late-seventeenth century is now an extremely collectable genre of sword.

Importantly, the secret knowledge of how to hollow- ground blades rested primarily in Germany and determined attempts were made to bring back that technology to England, including an unsuccessful invitation for German smiths to come and settle in England and teach native workers. A English patent was granted in 1688 for the production of hollow ground blades but progress was slow, due mainly to the unsettled political environment in England.

Shotley did not appear to turn out many hollow-ground blades and within a relatively short period of time the group of businessmen who started the enterprise sold out to one of its employees, a certain Herman Mohll. The name Mohll or the anglicised Mole as it was to later become, deserves a special place in British sword-making history as it is synonymous with the manufacture of British swords, particularly those service patterns supplied directly to the British Army.

The first of Mohll’s hollow blade ventures at Shotley Bridge soon ran into trouble with British Customs, due to his involvement with a cargo of smuggled, partly finished, hollow- ground blades from Germany, that he planned to retail as his own. We then next see him starting up another company, Herman Mohll and Son, which concentrated on the manufacture of military blades.

This he eventually sold out to Robert Oley (nee Ohlig), in 1742, who carried on the business until 1832 when Robert Moll, a descendant of the original family, bought back the firm, and changed the name again to Mole. They continued as a military contractor of swords and bayonets until being subsumed in 1922 by the Wilkinson Sword Company.

It is interesting to see that Shotley Bridge had high ideals when it came to proclaiming the quality of their blades and even impressed a running horse mark to blades in imitation of the running wolf marks seen on Solingen / Passau blades. Shotley Bridge has interest for the student and collector in that it was a historical starting point for British sword manufacture rather than a beacon of technological and artistic prowess. For that we need to adjust our gaze to the cities of London and Birmingham.


LONDON

Up until the late eighteenth century when Birmingham took over the primary role of service sword manufacture, London was at the centre of both sword making and retailing. It was an obvious choice due to some basic geography. For hundreds of years, it had been a port of entry and exit for manufactured goods to the continent. Countless sword blades were brought over from Germany and either decorated or mounted to London-made hilts and scabbards. They were then shipped out, most notably to the fledgling United States, where the eagle-head sword is commonly found with an English maker mark. Many craftsmen were involved in this process and London carved out a justifiable name for herself during the eighteenth century, particularly in the manufacture of silver-hilted smallswords. Those collectors lucky enough to acquire these exquisite swords, will invariably see a London silver hallmark to the hilt (if not rubbed away) and, if luckier still, the initials of the maker are sometimes present. The work of Leslie Southwick (London Silver-Hilted Swords) has made tracing original London sword silversmiths considerably easier and I fully recommend this exhaustive book on English silver-hilted swords.


Names that the collector of British military swords will be familiar with include many London makers and retailers such as John Prosser, Samuel Brunn, Nathaniel Jeffreys, John Salter, Henry Tatham, Francis Thurkle and, of course, Henry Wilkinson.

The sword and cutlery trade was based primarily in the City of London and included such locales as Cheapside, London Bridge, and Fleet Street. Prestigious addresses such as the Strand, Piccadilly, Bond Street, and Pall Mall acted as both manufacturing locations and retailing hubs. Many of the sword retailers and makers became very wealthy and subsequently moved out of the centre of London to more leafy and cleaner areas, although a sizeable number of dedicated sword makers tended to live and die in their original neighbourhoods.

John Salter retired to the comforts of Bexley, Kent and Nathaniel Jeffreys left the City for distant Worcester.

Special mention must also be made of one notable character in the London trade during the Napoleonic period. His name was John Justus Runkel and his is one of the most frequently observed signatures to be found on British military swords of that period. J.J. Runkel, was a German immigrant who became a British subject in 1796. He proceeded to almost corner the market in the large-scale importation of sword blades from Solingen, Germany, via the port of Emden. In the first years of the nineteenth century he was said to be handling hundreds of blades every month. No wonder so many are still available to the collector.

He did not involve himself in the actual manufacture of swords, but was purely a conduit or agent for German blades entering into London. They came as either plain or decorated blades with blue and gilt applied in a standard format. Look at a number of Runkel blades together and you will see that the motifs are all very similar and seldom vary. Runkel was catering for an early form of “mass-market”, and the British officer purchasing a Runkel blade would not find too many surprises. That said, a blue and gilt blade by Runkel retaining most of the original colour is still a very attractive piece, and we should be glad that a reasonable number have survived.

In contrast to the Birmingham trade who produced most of the plain service swords required by the ordinary soldier, London was noted for her skill in combining the art of the jeweller, leather worker and blade decorator. Many presentation swords, particularly those made during the Napoleonic Wars, were of London origin. Andrew Mowbray, in his book on American Eagle-headed Swords (The American Eagle-Head Pommel Sword), remarks that London was regarded as producing a higher standard of fire-gilt finish to blades than those seen in Birmingham, and that a London blade could be recognised purely within that criteria.

London sword makers enjoyed a flourishing trade within Britain and on the continent for many years. It was only after the 1820’s, and the re-emergence of Solingen, combined with economic depression at home, that we see a dramatic reduction in the capital’s ability to re-capture past sword-making glories.


Nineteenth Century

As we move into the nineteenth century, the British Army realised that there was an urgent need for better standardisation of production and quality within the issue of swords. This led to the belief that a manufacturing facility, based in Britain and better controlled by the military authorities, was an urgent necessity. A Board of Ordnance had already been set up since the seventeenth century with the job of overseeing the standard of arms produced for the monarch’s forces. There was a system of inspection within the Tower of London but improvements were needed and, in 1804, the Board of Ordnance established the Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock, north of London. It was later to be designated the Royal Small Arms Factory and became a major supplier of guns, swords and bayonets to the British Army. Despite this, it was still unable to produce the very large numbers required by the expanding British armed forces and contracts were regularly shared with British and German commercial sword makers. This can result in the collector encountering both British and German makers’ marks to one particular pattern of sword, unlike the dedicated French government sword makers at Klingenthal or Chatellerault, whose blades are consistently marked with the names of these two famous French domestic government armaments factories.


Enfield Ordnance Factory, c.1853.
A typical 1853 Pattern Cavalry Trooper’s sword might be seen with both Enfield, Mole and Kirschbaum (German) makers marks.


It must also be remembered that many London cutlers had workshops or agents in Birmingham and this situation was reciprocated with the Birmingham trade. Towards the end of nineteenth century, the number of actual sword makers, rather than retailers, in London, had greatly diminished. Great names such as Prosser, Salter and Tatham had long gone and companies such as Wilkinson, Thurkle and Gaunt were left to splutter on until the early years of the next century. Only Wilkinson Sword survived after 1930.

© The History of the Manufacture of British Swords article by Harvey Withers – militariahub.com

The History of British Sword Manufacture - MilitariaHub
https://www.militariahub.com/the-his...british-swords
Origins of British Sword Manufacture. Let us first take a look at the historical origins of indigenous British sword manufacture. The recognition of sword-making in Britain as a distinct trade can be traced back as far as 1415, when The Worshipful Company of Cutlers of London received Royal Assent. The metal producing area of Solingen, Germany ..
 
Old August 11th, 2023 #4
jagd messer
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Default Solingen

Solingen the city of Swords


View to the Jaegerhof restaurant and the monument of the brave blacksmith Peter Hahn at the old main market of Solingen, Germany 1930s (b/w photo).



SOLINGEN



Solingen.

Solingen was first mentioned in the year 1067, and for centuries it was a tiny Rhineland village. From 1347 to 1352, the plague devastated the population. Engelbert II, Archbishop of Cologne, who was eventually assassinated, had many enemies and built a castle in Solingen which was used until 1386 as a residence by the Counts of Berg who had been elevated to Dukedom. Solingen became a city in the early 15th century with city rights granted by the Dukes of Jülich.

In the year of 1600, Solingen consisted of 188 houses with about 1200 inhabitants and it was already famous for its sword-blades. The 30 Years War put an end to Solingen's prominence and it was 100 years before it fully recovered. The old castle was put back into temporary use as a fortress for a while during the 30 Years War and not conquered by the invading Swedes. Afterwards, it was basically levelled. In the latter part of the 17th century, a group of disgruntled Lutheran swordsmiths from Solingen broke their guild oaths and took their sword-making skills and formulas with them to Shotley Bridge, then a remote village in England, where they set up shop. Shotley had rich iron deposits in the area and, because of the fast flowing waters of the River Derwent, was ideal for tempering swords. The little English town therefore became the heart of Britain's swordmaking industry.

Solingen passed to Prussia in 1815.

On November 4, 1944, 174 both American and British bombers dumped 4,921 tons of high explosives bombs and mines and 138 tons of incendiary bombs on it, igniting 900 fires. Although it destroyed the hospital and broke the water, electric and telephone lines, no historical buildings were yet hit. The second attack took place, the following day when there was no capacity to fight fires or save the town. In a 26 minute raid, 165 British bombers dropped 783 tons of high explosives bombs and 150 tons of incendiary bombs on Solingen, this time destroying the densely populated, ancient town center. 1,200 fires raged and the town was in rubble. 1,609 homes were totally destroyed, and 20,000 persons became shelterless. On November 5th, the English broadcast stated: “It is announced that Solingen, which is the heart of the German steel goods industry, is a dead city.” Also dead were 1,040 civilian.


Siegen, Soest, Solingen, Staubling, Stettin, Stralsund, Stuttgart


Bombing Hell Of German Cities - Exulanten
11 VIII 2023.


SOLINGEN, Germany – The City of Blades



Solingen was first mentioned in 1067 by a chronicler who called the area "Solonchon". Early variations of the name included "Solengen", "Solungen", and "Soleggen", although the modern name seems to have been in use since the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

Blacksmith smelters, dating back to over 2000 years, have been found around the town adding to Solingen's fame as a Northern Europe blacksmith center. Swords from Solingen have turned up in places such as the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the British Isles. Northern Europe prized the quality of Solingen's manufactured weaponry, and they were traded across the European continent. Solingen today remains the knife-center of Germany.

It was a tiny village for centuries, but became a fortified town in the 15th century.

In Medieval times, the swordsmiths of Solingen coined the town's image, which is preserved to this date. In the latter part of the 17th century, a group of swordsmiths from Solingen broke their guild oaths by taking their sword-making secrets with them to Shotley Bridge, County Durham in England.


SOLINGEN, Germany – The City of Blades 11 VIII 2023.


 
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