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Prewar Star Theory from the Elk River Institute for Advanced Harmonica Studies

 I've been looking at trademarks and I had one of those Eureka ideas a while back, one of those ideas that hit you while you are driving in the car.  I've heard that the Hohner star represented the Hohner kids in the biz, which a lot of folks refute cause the use of the star, five point and six point, makes no sense.
What I offer here is purely circumstantial, but interesting nonetheless and I think is the most plausible explanation presented thus far on the prewar Hohner trademark star.
Hohner isn't the only one to have used the star.

Here's some others
Five point star- Jacob Birk, Trossingen.

Six point star-
Adolf Duerrschmidt
Carl Essbach
Emil  Friedel,
Carl Herold
Armin Liebmann
Christian Weiss
Otto Reichelt

I've got some Hohner New Best Quality Harps, the harp that became the Old Standby from around WWI. On those, Hohner pairs the 5-point star with a moon in what is identical to the crescent moon/star of Islam, but the symbol is older than Islam, so Hohner might have been thinking of the Eastern Roman Empire, the contemporary Ottoman Empire or maybe just liked the way it looked, of the three, I'd guess he just liked the way it looked. I have no idea where Hohner came up with the crescent moon and star, but I believe the five-point star came from that early pairing with the crescent moon. It's not just the N.B.Q. harps, an early Hohner trademark has the crescent moon and star as well. Many companies looked to the heavens for trademarks, there were many companies using stars, and many companies (Seydel is one) who used a sun.

So this same star also finds its way on the back of prewar Mouse Ear Marine Bands, Old Standbys etc.

Now, here was the Eureka moment.... the six point star. The six-point star starts appearing on Marine Bands, when, the late 1920s, early 1930s?
Of the seven companies who used the SIX point star on their trademark, one is especially significant. When Hohner left the clock biz, he saw the harmonica as a big moneymaker. He tried to get hired on with Messner to learn the trade, but Messner told him to take a hike.
So Hohner makes buddies with Weiss, Messner's nephew who was starting his own harp company. He would go over to Weiss' shop and hang out with Weiss, looking over his shoulder the whole time and learn how harps were made while supposedly shooting the bull. Messner eventually got on and threw him out, but Hohner got his education.
Over the following decades, Hohner buried the Weiss company. In the 1920s, the Weiss heir died leaving the company to a brother, Otto Weiss. He sold the company to Hohner in 1928 to Hohner. Part of that deal was Otto got a management position at Hohner.
The Weiss trademark was simply a big six-point star with a "W" inside of it. It wasn't long at all after Hohner owned that trademark and Otto Weiss was on board with Hohner in a management position that the six-pointed star appears on Marine Bands, etc. There are numerous other examples when Hohner used trademarks of assimilated companies... so it makes sense to me.

I think that's the most plausible explanation yet.

The Elk River Instititute for Advanced Harmonica Studies Theory on why the Six-Point star was removed 

Paris World Exposition 1937:

 German Pavilion           Soviet Pavilion

All we know as fact about the waning of the six-point star on the Hohner trademark was that it disappeared around 1937. One generally accepted theory about why it disappeared was that some high-ranking Nazi official finally noticed that the Hohner star looked exactly like the Jewish Star of David. The surprising thing is that the star on the trademark survived four years of Nazi rule.

There was one significant event in 1937, however, that would explain its sudden disappearance.

Hohner was represented at the Paris World Exhibition in 1937. Hohner even redesigned  rear coverplates to commemorate it with a little circle that says "1937 Paris."

Most of the Hohner harmonicas I've seen that bear the 1937 Paris marking feature no star in the trademark. However, I have seen TWO with that same special Paris 1937 coverplate that had six-point stars!

So, before the Exposition, Hohner has invested in remaking dies (which isn't cheap) for its booth there and immediately made additional dies devoid of the star. They certainly wouldn't have gone to the considerable expense of remaking coverplate dies unless they had some compelling reason to do so.

There wasn't a great deal of interest in the exhibition among the high-ranking Nazi officials at first, but organizers placed the Soviet and Nazi pavilion located right across the fairway from one another, ensuring things would get interesting.  Hitler's architect and BFF Albert Speer figured out what the Soviets were building there and interpreted it as a symbol of a Soviet invasion of Germany. This led to an architectural urinating match between Hitler and Stalin, who both took a personal interest in every detail. With every detail in the German Pavilion microscopical examined, it seems very plausible that the six-point star was noticed there and subsequently removed.