Detlef,
The knife you show is clearly of good quality (clean lines, thick spine, quality fittings and hilt, tight construction) and as such, was certainly sold to a more affluent Venezuelan. Your knife also appears to have some age and an early 20th century date doesn't seem to be unlikely, so it is a far cry in both time and quality from the currently made and cheap German knives shown in this thread. My argument isn't against the economic viability of expensive European or US items being sold to the Hispanic upper crust from the mid 19th century to the present (witness all the 50's Yank tanks still chugging along in Cuba). What I find to be economically impossible is the ability to sell
cheap European or US products made in the last quarter of the 20th century to present, in Hispaniola. Any such market would be serviced by the Chinese. It is undisputed that, since the 1850s, German import/export firms located in South America provided German (as well as French and US) luxury items for wealthy South Americans. The heyday of these firms appears to have been from the latter half of the 19th through the first quarter of the 20th centuries. I have provided a post card photo of the Van Dissel building in Maracaibo which, judging by the parked cars, appears to have been taken in the 1920s-1930s. The online monograph, Christern & Co. y los comerciantes alemanes de Maracaibo, by E Espínola Benítez · 2006,
http://ve.scielo.org (English translation available) which gives a history of the five main German import/export firms in operation at that time clearly shows that the European (and US) goods offered for sale were high end products intended for the well-to-do. Van Dissel, Rode & Co is mentioned in the monograph as one of those main five firms.
Sincerely,
RobT