Another WW2 surrender pen.

[rx170]

Fieldmarshal Keitel, signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8/9 May 1945. Can we ID the pen he is using? Pelikan 100? It also seems that it is not a Fp?

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Wilhelm_Keitel_Kapitulation.jpg

Edited September 11, 2009 by rx170

[Canoodler]

Fieldmarshal Keitel, signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8/9 May 1945. Can we ID the pen he is using? Pelikan 100? It also seems that it is not a Fp?

If not a fountain pen, why the ink wells and blotter?

[rx170]

Well, it is a FP...I took a closer look at it.....

 

Is it Pelikan 100?

 

 

[Ernst Bitterman]

I'm weak on wartime European pens, so this is a very ignorant guess; that band looks rather Mont Blanc-ey to me.

[tknechtel]

The clip and the top of the cap look very much like a Pelikan 100 to my eyes.

[publius]

Fountain pens nothing — I want to know who was using the dip pen that's sitting on the table!

[Gran]

Perhaps he was going to sign with the dip pen and someone handed him one of those newfangled Pelikans!

 

The table covering looks like wool felt.

 

Fascinating photo. Thanks for posting it.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Gran

[Zoe]

It's not easy to tell but the clip seems to resemble the Pelikan.

 

It's also likely that dip pens were often used during this historical period.

 

Fascinating photograph.

[DJJM19951998]

Fieldmarshal Keitel, signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8/9 May 1945. Can we ID the pen he is using? Pelikan 100? It also seems that it is not a Fp?

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Wilhelm_Keitel_Kapitulation.jpg

 

Edited September 11, 2009 by DJJM19951998

[kushbaby]

Not an expert (by any means!), and STILL can't find a copy of the Dittmer book (despite desperate searching), but it sorta looks like one of the 100Ns that have the wide cap band and fluted clip. The dates are correct, and these are wartime pens. I have a beat up one of these (that I got as a "bonus" with the purchase of a 100 here on FPN), and it looks like it. I don't think the 100s had the single wide band. Also, see:

 

http://www.thepenguinpen.com/pelikan/fspel...Green100Ns.html

(and other bits on Rick Propas' site)

 

and

 

http://www.pelikan-guide.com/100n_black_cap.html

 

 

[jmkeuning]

I wonder if he went into a store and bought that.

 

Or if he went into someone's house a stole it.

 

What are the odds of either?

[Rick Propas]

I'm pretty confident in saying that Keitel's pen is not a Pelikan. The shape of the captop is wrong, the capband is wrong. I might want to agree with Ernst Bitterman that it looks a bit like a non-Meisterstuck Mont Blanc, but I'm not at all sure of that. I'm no MB expert, but it just doesn't look like one of theirs. Maybe a Matador?

 

Someone with a bit of time might want to enlarge the image (it blows up pretty well) and go through Martini's book looking at bands, captop profiles and clip profiles.

[jobojangles]

This is definitely not a Pelikan. To me it looks like a Soennecken 1310 "Medicus" (the bigger brother of the 1306 which has to cap-rings).

Jo

[FrankB]

I vaguely recall hearing somewhere that standard Wehrmacht issue FP's were made by Geha. I have no references to support that claim.

 

I can, however, assure you that dip pens were very common in that era. My mother (in the US) wrote to her brothers who were in the armed services with a dip pen. Her family had no FP's. They were too expensive. My dad's mother and sister wrote to him with a dip pen.

Edited September 14, 2009 by FrankB

[ToasterPastry]

I'm going to agree 'jobojangles' in that it is probably a Sonnecken. Look at the clip design seen in the center pens in the photograph from my collection. Very similar in look. Pen was produced at about the same time.

 

Would it be too hard for you to reduce the size of that photograph? It's gi-normous!

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/IMG_3302.jpg

[Johnny Appleseed]

I wonder if he went into a store and bought that.

 

Or if he went into someone's house a stole it.

 

What are the odds of either?

 

Bought it, though I suspect more likely that it was purchased for him by a secretary or some such than he went into a store.

 

Were it some low-level officer or enlisted man, then stolen is quite possible. But I suspect a high-ranking officer would have purchased their pen, or requisitioned it.

 

But the point is well taken.

 

John

[jobojangles]

Hi ToasterPastry,

Soennecken 504 and 506 are post-war pens, but Your 504 has the pre-war shaped clip like the 1310. When I find the time I post a picture of the 1310.

 

Btw, Geha started producing pens in 1950!

 

Jo

[rhosygell]

It could also be a Melbi - they looked very similar and had a similarly styled clip, again available throughout the 30's therefore plausible in a wartime setting.

[Ernst Bitterman]

The lesson I'm learning is don't base even idiot-guesses on the unexpanded photo. What I took for a narrow-wide-narrow banding in the small version of the photo is clearly not the case. I'm going to retreat to eat cool oatmeal with a specially blunted spoon now.

[FrankB]

jobojangles wrote:

 

"Btw, Geha started producing pens in 1950!"

 

I stand corrected! So much for hearsay.