"Zehn and Neuhaus, who delivered thousands of 2nd class crosses?"
Hi Sascha,
either you are misreading my initial post, or I was not clear enough in how I formulated.
It is great to finally know who Z is now, but that was not my point.
My point is, "What/who were the esoteric inintials for"...
1) Although they may be less esoteric after Scharfenberg's article, for years it was theory amongst collectors as to who the makers were... Question... What purpose could they have served at the time? More likely for a system of control than for commercial purposes? IE for official control and nothing else.
2) Would such stamps serve any purpose on commercially sold pieces? Would a buyer have any use for them at all? Doubtfull if Mr Müller buying a cross in München in 1919 would know or care who "z" was. And for Herr Müller, it would have been a REALLY esoteric stamp... not even google to tray and look it up....
3) If these are control stamps, can we assume any crosses without control stamps are Private purchase? ie. anything without makers initials, but insteead with Nothing, 800, makers crests alaMeybauer etc. etc.
(Some state awards DO have silver content stamps however )
THOSE are my core questions, and are not answered by Scharfenbergs article.
WHO the stamps belonged to is another topic all together, The Scharfenberg article came out some time ago, it has still not led to a definative list.
best
Chris