It appeared I needed to be my own peer group. I started with the “REU” eBay listings again and the commonest were for charm bracelet charms shaped as “shields”. These had enamelling referencing a “location” on the front face and on the back was “REU”, usually with additional numbers or lettering. Fortunately there were a couple of items listed with original packaging pictured.
I had found a new word “wappen” (heraldic shield) to add to “REU” and when I searched on the inter net and immediately I found references to the precision metal working company shown below.
Currently based at “Huebach” a bit to the East of “Stuttgart, the Fritz Reu Company has been involved in manufacturing toys, trinkets, badges, medals coins and various souvenir stuff (including my spoons shown below) from the 1920’s. The company has obviously been a prolific concern as I noted some of the eBay listings from the USA were using “REU” as the description of “charms” even though there was no indication of a maker at all.
It is now clear who made the spoons but what about the numbers or lack of numbers on the back of the spoons? The red packaged charm is labelled with “800” and this is an extremely common European standard for silver purity and the German word “echt” seems to translate to real or genuine and I think this sorts out one of my spoons. The label carried on the plastic box in my photo has “feinsilberauflage” on and I find “auflage” translates as layer/coating/plating so it was for a silver plated spoon. Is this the interpretation that needs to be put on my spoon labelled simply “REU” and the spoon labelled with “90 REU”?
This is all as I had previously assumed but I was told a long time ago that “you can assume nothing” that is not evidence based. Please will the German speakers on the forum forgive any observations I have made that are no doubt, totally obvious to them. I hope the forum will put me right if I am wrong.
Yours
Fishless