Word: solingen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...swordmakers of Solingen, in Western Germany, knew a thing or two about cutting edges long before Richard the Lionhearted matched blades with wily Saladin. Roman soldiers who had served in the East brought many of the steelmaking secrets of Damascus into the Rhineland, and in the 6th Century Theodoric the Ostrogoth pronounced Solingen's swords worthy of Vulcan's own forge. Charlemagne armed his warriors at Solingen's smithies. During the Crusades they produced the finest blades in Christendom. In the 16th Century the smiths of Solingen engraved the proud label, "Solingen made me," on their blades...
When swords went out of fashion, Solingen's craftsmen turned their skill to the making of bayonets, cutlery, scissors, surgical instruments, straight razors, and even wafer-thin, newfangled safety razor blades...
Then came the time when bayonets were superseded by other, blunter weapons. In a single air raid five years ago, a third of Solingen was reduced to rubble. "All we could salvage out of our ruins," recalled Junior Partner Wilhelm Lange of the cutlery firm of Wagner & Lange, "we put into a wheelbarrow." Part of the wheelbarrow's load was a steel filing case containing some recent orders...
...orders could not be filled just then. Hitler's armies took what was left of Solingen's output. When peace came, trade barriers in the Allies' dismantling policy, lack of manpower and the inroads of foreign mass production were new handicaps to the craftsmen of Solingen. But inch by inch Solingen fought its way back, and the steelmakers never forgot their faithful customers, many of them barbers who would not attack their customers' whiskers with anything but a Solingen razor...
...last week, Lange's shop was 70% rebuilt, and he had finally been able to fill the last of his back orders. To Barber Charles Liddy of Castleblayney, Ireland, who had sent in a paid-up order in 1939, Lange shipped six new Solingen razors. Included in the shipment was a note: Wagner & Lange, it said, were sorry about the unavoidable delay...