Chapter ‘Nicht auf befreundete Personen schießen.’

Overview & Synopsis

In 2002 the Dutch police adopted the pepperspray as a non-lethal weapon to stop aggressive, knife-swinging persons and biting dogs. The topic of this article are its predecessors, the German so-called ‘Apparent Death’ (in German: Scheintod) peppergas pistols and revolvers. In the beginning of the 20th century, a period in which many European governments started to impose anti-gun laws, these cheap and legally available pocketguns offered a non-lethal means of selfdefence, on the road and at home. Present in the collections of Korpora are five peppergas pistols, all originating from the collection of the Amsterdam Police Museum (1928-1968) which was opened to educate recruits of the city’s municipal police force. The German patent for the peppergas cartridge was registred in 1905 to Adolf Niemeyer in the city of Alfeld in the Harz region. Externally this cartridge resembles the centre-fire .410 shotgun shell. The three-barrelled, three-shot pistol was developed and registred in 1911 by the well known gunfactory of August Menz in Suhl. The barrel-block tips down and forward to load the gun. The simple single-shot pocket-pistols had a bayonet-locked removable barrel for reloading. Their manufacturers are largely unknown. Five-shot solid frame revolvers with a foldable trigger without triggerguard were manufactured as well. Both single-action revolvers and ‘Hammerless’-models with a double-action mechanism were made by various German and Belgian manufacturers.