with bright broad double-edged rebated blade (scattered old staining) etched and gilt on one side beyond the forte with a female execution scene by sword, the figures each in contemporary costume, and on the other with a male figure hanging from a gallows, the forte on both sides with central fuller etched and gilt with the rhyming couplet ‘Die Obrigkiet Steuret Dem Unheil .Ich Exequire Ihr Unhrtheil. Anno 1694.’, and flanked by etched and gilt scrolling flowering foliage, hilt comprising horizontal quillons of octagonal section swelling at the tips, the latter each with button terminal, fig-shaped pommel of octagonal section surmounted by a tang button, and slightly swelling tubular grip engraved along one side with a crucifix and tools of execution, the sacred ‘IHS’ within a wreath and on a scroll above, a skull and crossed bones above three dice at the base, and all between acanthus, and along the other side with a cockerel perched atop a martial column between acanthus en suite, in its scabbard covered in black leather (old wear and damage, open along one side) with locket and silver chape, the former with replaced copper alloy hook, the latter stamped with a mark, '10', 89.5 cm blade

Provenance

Boelcke Collection, Berlin

Auction sale, Oslo, 4 October 1935, lot 55

E.A. Christensen’s Collection, Copenhagen

Dr. Jerome Zwanger Collection, Massapequa Park, New York, USA

Literature

Ada Bruhn Hoffmeyer, Gammelt Jern, E.A. Christensens Vabensamling, 1968, pp. 122, 124 and 125, pl. 30, no. 83

The inscription is in old German and reads in translation: ‘The authorities condemn the wrongdoer. I merely carry out their sentence’.

Executioner's swords with silver hilts are exceptionally rare.