sources give that Wilhlem Brenneke was born on March 30th, 1865 in Leipzig. He may have been born there but at some point, according to his great-grandson Dr. Peter Mank, Wilhlem Brenneke was roaming around Hannover playing Robin Hood with his bow & arrow. It was here that Brenneke crossed paths with Scherping and there was an attempt by a Büchsenmacher, master gunsmith, Scherping, who noticed the raw talent of the lad, to bring Brenneke under the fold and get him on the path to being a master gunsmith.
Evidently those sources giving that Brenneke was born in Leipzig are incorrect as thanks to Baumgarten's efforts of digging out the 1960 Gun Digest article, he confirms that Wilhelm Brenneke was indeed born in Hannover and the pieces fall into place. Also by age 13 Brenneke revealed his fascination with guns in that he had cobbled together some components to make a percussion longarm and had saved enough pennies to purchase a longarm, which he used to inflicted a lot of misery on the local rat population, chambered for one of the Teschner rimfire cartridges.
Also as a side note he too like Kreighoff with their Montage, had a small patented(D.R.G.M.) scope mount improvement termed the "Seitliche Fernrohrmontage System Brenneke", which I'm not positive on the correct translation. I don't know about ya'll but to me this story gets more interesting by the minute.
Polid Hütte's 7.18.1893 trademark
from
http://www.poldi.cz/history/historie-rozsirene-1-3/?sess=wm3bc7ea48b2c92f1382519b497f89009daKind Regards,
Raimey
rse
