wazu013 wrote:I saw one of these in Ray's pics and remembered I have one. This one is made by Wilhelm Kayser for Bayer's pesticide division. I got it from a nice old German lady.
Bayer-Kayser.jpgBayer.jpgBayer-1.jpg
The one I have is by F.Bronsmann. One reason I started researching the knife is the additional names on the knife.The main part says(in Spanish I think)"Productos Pharmaceuticos" Bayer-Meister Lucius and on one end in a circle,"Meister Lucius bruning Hoechst".
Came across a quite interesting reprise of the Bayer history. It was a part of a huge business conglomerate Krupp which included Bayer;Agfa BASF;GAF;and many smaller companies. Bayer was noted for a number of innovations;among them the introduction of heroin as a substitute for morphine around 1910. Strangely it was first introduced into children's cough syrup(!)and was not removed until 1971(!)
It was also credited with various pesticides and also the infamous Zyclon B gas which was used in the gas chambers during WWII. Another WWII innovation was another synthetic substitute for morphine known as methadone which is in wide use today as a weaning off drug for heroin addicts. As an aside the technical name for methadone is Dolophine which was named for..........drum roll: Adolph Hitler!
There was also many references to ties with American businessmen during the war but if one wants they can look that up on line.
Strange the things you learn when researching knives!