As I said, I didn’t know that RZM was so early. But I still think that it was not
normal to se RZM-markings on items from 1933 and early 1934.
I have never seen an early
HJ-knife (without ricasso) with RZM-marking, and the same with the lowest numbered HJ sport-achievement badge.
To get back to where it all started (post 1), I think that the early badges all are without RZM-marking, but I do not know exactly when the marking get normal. It would be nice to see the
highest no. without RZM-marking and
the lowest with marking. In that way we could see where it changed. Just like we now know that the hollow ones are about the first 3.000 items (as per the thread about hollow badges).
Michael
It is a very compliated issue, and will apply to different items in different ways. I covered this to the best of my abillities in the Party Badge
book in the RZM chapter, but only as the RZM markings applied to small official badges, and nothing else. Even in just that department, by 1934 the second numbering change was already taking place, from MA to simply N°. and then in April 1935 it changed again to M1/. And with small official regulated items, the RZM code can already be found in 1933.
If you are looking at these
Leistungsabzeichen and trying to work out the RZM date from them, you are looking in the wrong place, as the markings on them (or not with early ones) has little to nothing to do with the RZM marking system and/or logos in general. That is just the way the first few contracts of them were handled, and has no connection at all to what codes were in place or used already at the time they first came out.
The only real items you can use of definite proof, are items made by early makers who had their RZM codes revoked. You will have a definite date when maker xXXx lost his MA number, for example, and then you find the actual items made by them, and you know that they were made no later than the date they still had a license, so you can work it out from them, that some makers were indeed using a RZM logo on their items in 1933. Or at least get a good idea of how some makers were markings their items around the date they lost their license.
It will apply to all items differently, and as well if the item was official straigh away, or if it took a few months to become an official item.
This subject I actually covered in detail in a few chapters in the mentioned book, and you can even find makers using wrong codes much later on too. As well as you can find stationary from the manufacturers from as late as 1940, that still show the old MA code, which was replaced in mid-1935 already!!!!
I personally do not think we will ever find any one specific date when everyone must use the RZM logo, or any date when it was exactly first used. We can be sure, though, it was used in 1933 already by some makers, with some items. And with other items it will depand on many other things, as well as status of the item.
