AKAH Walther Leading Edge PPK Holster

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On Saturday, I posted that I had acquired 2 new to me holsters. The first one was a Brill-style holster by Charles Kluge. Here is the second one, an AKAH Leading Edge holster. Here is what I found out by doing some research.

This is an original Walther PPK AKAH Holster in the scarce leading edge style. This style of proprietary holster was manufactured by holster maker Albrecht Kind (Akah) during and after the war. The leading edge magazine pouch were designed for finger rest mags. The nice brown leather holster is in very good condition with honest wear. The leather is soft and pliable yet still retains the original Walther PPK ink stamp on the interior leather, as well as, the AKAH crossed rifles/crossed pistols/wreath trademark and D.R.G.M. stamp under the closure strap. On AKAH holsters, brass fittings were replaced with aluminum as the war progressed, and the forward edge magazine pouch was introduced at this time too, instead of the standard holster having the spare magazine pouch placed on the front of the holster. They were produced in the late 30's and 40's by AKAH, and that D.R.G.M. stands for Deutsches Reichsgebrauchsmuster (German Empire Realm Pattern), and was thus a design registered with the Reich. The orange stitching is in tight condition with no broken threads. The interior leather is a little dirty, but the ink stamp is easily visible. The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (in German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. A High Ranking Officer's dress holster in the NSDAP would have been a brown holster like this one, but that doesn't mean this is one.

Please let me know anything I have left out. Here are some pictures:
Larry
 

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Beautiful holdter,,,and PPk.!

I have a PPk E/C marked w/a holster. Can't remember if the xtra mag pocket is on the front face or like this one.
Front face most likely..
 
Larry:

Thanks for your confidence, but you’ve got most of it in your presentation already. That holster is in really nice shape!

Albrecht Kind wasn’t a holster maker, by the way, but the founder of one of the largest German wholesale businesses for guns, gun-, horse-, and dog leather, and gun optics, and long dead when this holster was made :)

Exact dating and a good timeline of Akah holster has been a frustrating exercise, since the still-operating business did not keep usable records; from what I’ve read on German collector forums, the company is very responsive to inquiries, but always with a variation of “sorry, we really didn’t keep notes from back then … “

Holster historians talk about statistical evidence for an informal “division of labor” starting around 1940: Akah made mostly the holsters for PP/PPK, while Gustav Genschow/Geco made holsters for Sauer and Mauser pistols.

When exactly the leading-edge design was introduced seems uncertain. It was available in black for issue to the SS (not sure if exclusively) and in the brown version you have, for party members, military officers, and commercial purchase. The photos of the front are very dark, but I don’t see any additional markings on yours; party officials usually, but not always, had stampings on the flap like the one below:

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Larry:

Thanks for your confidence, but you’ve got most of it in your presentation already. That holster is in really nice shape!

Albrecht Kind wasn’t a holster maker, by the way, but the founder of one of the largest German wholesale businesses for guns, gun-, horse-, and dog leather, and gun optics, and long dead when this holster was made :)

Exact dating and a good timeline of Akah holster has been a frustrating exercise, since the still-operating business did not keep usable records; from what I’ve read on German collector forums, the company is very responsive to inquiries, but always with a variation of “sorry, we really didn’t keep notes from back then … “

Holster historians talk about statistical evidence for an informal “division of labor” starting around 1940: Akah made mostly the holsters for PP/PPK, while Gustav Genschow/Geco made holsters for Sauer and Mauser pistols.

When exactly the leading-edge design was introduced seems uncertain. It was available in black for issue to the SS (not sure if exclusively) and in the brown version you have, for party members, military officers, and commercial purchase. The photos of the front are very dark, but I don’t see any additional markings on yours; party officials usually, but not always, had stampings on the flap like the one below:

attachment.php

Thanks for the information. So Albrecht Kind and AKAH are not the same?:confused: I was under the impression Albrecht Kind and AKAH was one and the same, and AKAH was some sort of abbreviation for it. But, it sounds like you are saying AK was the distributor for AKAH items. My photos are dark. I meant to retake them with better light, but haven't yet. There are no party leader or other markings on my holster though.
Larry
 
Thanks for the information. So Albrecht Kind and AKAH are not the same?:confused: I was under the impression Albrecht Kind and AKAH was one and the same, and AKAH was some sort of abbreviation for it. But, it sounds like you are saying AK was the distributor for AKAH items…

Sorry to be unclear. Albrecht Kind was the company founder back in 1853. I just meant to correct the impression that he was a holster maker. He was a businessman whose company dealt in imported guns and manufactured holsters (and lots of other leather goods). AKAH, or Akah, is the trade name and tradestamp the company used starting after WW I; before that it was usually just AK. The official name of the company was Albrecht Kind Gmbh (= about the same as our LLC)
 

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