Donno how "Carl Stiegele" relates to Bernard Merkel. I would bet my hat, however, that Bernard Merkel is the source of the fairly often encountered BeMeSu (again, simply standing for Benard Merkel, Suhl, the first two letters of each word) stamping on guns that appear very similar to those made by Gebruder Merkel. It would also seem, to me at least, that the GM stamped forend irons on the two BeMeSu guns I owned would simply be further evidence of the relationship. I emailed you the original German language copy of the article on Bernard Merkel, I was able to find it on my computer. Hope you can translate enough of the German to make sense of it. I had a friend read it to me at the time, it just detailed some of the history and how the factory (a cottage factory, located in a multi story home in Suhl) came to be torn down. It is also in a recent GGCA magazine with some English translation. I am sure you can make better sense of the German text than I could at the time.
