This type of handgun was mainly used in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its name comes from the hook attached to the bottom of the barrel, which could be placed on a wall, for example, to absorb the recoil from the shot. The exciting find from Lichtenberg has two engraved coats of arms on the hook. These have already made it possible to assign it to the noble von Cramm family and roughly date it to the decades around 1500.

New research commissioned by Arne Homann, director of the Salder Castle Municipal Museum, will now clarify whether this attribution can be upheld and what the weapon, which has only survived as a fragment - perhaps due to an explosion caused by material defects and too much powder - might once have looked like.

As soon as the replica of the weapon has been completed, the piece will be presented in the municipal museum so that museum visitors can better imagine what the historically significant find once looked like in its entirety.

If everything goes as planned, according to museum director Homann, the weapon will even be functional and, of course, if possible, will not only be on display in the exhibition, but will also be safely presented to the public by experts at "living history events" at Salder Castle, the Lichtenberg castle ruins and elsewhere in the city.