Here's another case of a common tag used as a catch all to identify a general type of weapon being taken in a context more personal than it was ever intended to be.
I, too, have seen pieces labled as "satanic ritual daggers", particularly of the type referred to in Levine's and tend to agree with Nechesh that they were probably more magical related than actual Satanism, but in that time period, almost anything that looked even slightly macabre was immediately tossed into that category, but that shouldn't be all that surprising as hard core fundamentalists still do that even today.........I CAN'T be the only one here old enough to remember rock'n'roll and D&D being labled demonic and/or satanistic as well, can I?
The knife looks to be extremely well executed, from an artistic point of view, compared to many/most that I've seen and the date wouldn't surprise me as to being original for a gift/presentation piece from that era as well.
Germany seems to have produced a preponderance of these from the late 1700's, and particularly from the 1850's through the 1940's which DOES make the category of FRENCH satanic knives a bit odd, but who am I to quibble?
Mike
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