By Rafe Calder
Three words, stamped on a blade, in 1571. Me fecit Solingen. Made in Solingen.
The Chamber of Industry and Commerce for the region says that in 1571 Duke Wilhelm von Berg ordered all Solingen blades to carry that mark. It is an early example of a place name doing the work of a guarantee. In 2024 the German Blade Museum used the same words as the title of its new permanent exhibition, according to German Wikipedia.
The old city of blades
Wikipedia says Solingen was first mentioned in 1067 by a chronicler who called the area Solonchon, and that it is known as the Klingenstadt, the City of Blades, renowned for swords, knives, scissors and razors. A knife maker’s history says the founding dates to around the tenth century, though the exact year is uncertain, and that by the thirteenth century the town was famous for swords. We have not found a source that settles the earlier date.
The setting helped. The same knife maker’s account points to iron deposits in nearby hills and forests, and to the Wupper, which powered the grinding wheels. Wikipedia says the Wupper flows through the city for 26 kilometres.
The knife maker’s account says that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Solingen blades were exported as far as North Africa and the Middle East. Wikipedia says medieval swordsmiths designed the town’s coat of arms, and that in the late seventeenth century swordsmiths broke their guild oaths and moved to Shotley Bridge in England, taking their sword-making secrets with them. That is Wikipedia’s summary, and we have not checked it against a second source.
The firms
Names on Wikipedia’s list include Zwilling J.A. Henckels, Wüsthof, Böker, Güde, DOVO, Hubertus, WKC and P.D. Rasspe Söhne. The knife maker’s history dates Zwilling J.A. Henckels to 1731, Wüsthof to 1814 and Böker to the seventeenth century. It says the nineteenth century brought machine production and factories. We have not checked any of those company dates against the firms’ own pages.
The name is protected
The chamber of commerce says Germany enacted legal protection for the name Solingen in 1938, and that the chamber set out minimum requirements for use of the name in 1997. The requirements, as it currently states them, are that a product has been processed and finished during all key manufacturing stages within the industrial boundaries of Solingen, which for this purpose includes the neighbouring town of Haan.
So a blade marked Solingen has to meet a rule, and the rule is more than a postcode. The chamber’s document does not give the original 1938 wording, and we have not read it.
Fakes
The chamber’s document says the first documented counterfeits appeared in the nineteenth century. That is a useful reminder that a famous name attracts imitators, and it is why the rule about where the work is done exists at all. We have not seen the underlying cases.
The people
Wikipedia gives a population of 164,621 for 2025, against a peak of 179,371 in 1970, a drop of about 14,750. About half of the city’s 89.54 square kilometres is used for agriculture, horticulture or forestry, the same article says.
The museum
The German Blade Museum is in Gräfrath, in the former Augustinian convent, which has been its home since 1991, according to German Wikipedia. The collection was founded in 1904 as teaching models for the metalworking trade school, moved in 1954 to the restored Gräfrath town hall and was renamed the Deutsches Klingenmuseum. The museum calls its flatware collection the most comprehensive in the world, which is its claim and not one we have checked. Exhibits run, in the museum’s words, from the Bronze Age to the present, with swords, daggers, scissors, medical instruments and throwing knives. German Wikipedia adds that the collection includes ecclesiastical treasures, among them reliquaries dated to roughly 1300 to 1400, and the museum’s own listing mentions a Dröppelminna, a traditional coffee pot it describes as a symbol of the Bergisches Land.
Visitors can try some things themselves. German Wikipedia lists fencing instruction with authentic weapons, a historic tin-casting workshop with occasional demonstrations and a smithy for hands-on blacksmithing. It also says a new permanent exhibition, Me fecit Solingen, opened on 1 December 2024. Check the museum for current programmes and opening times, which we have not confirmed.
How to read a blade
Look for the mark. Ask what was forged, what was ground and what was finished, and where. If the maker says Solingen, ask whether the finishing was done within the area the chamber describes. It is a fair question and a short answer will tell you a lot.
What the mark does not say
The mark tells you about place and process. It does not tell you which steel the blade is made from, who designed the shape, how long the maker has been in business or whether the piece is the maker’s own work or a contract job. None of the sources we read covers those points, so ask each one directly and write down the answer.
A caution about old sources
Much of what is written about Solingen is written by firms that sell knives. Where we have used such a source, we have said so. Several dates here rest on a single account, and we have flagged those.
We will not name a maker in Solingen here, because we cannot source one.
Roam first. Shop later.