MBG: Theodor Bergmann
John Walter looks at the career of an under-appreciated inventor
John Walter looks at the career of an underappreciated inventor from the small Bavarian town of Sailauf.
James Stewart wrote in the 1973 Gun Digest: ‘Bergmann should rightly stand with Schwarzlose, Mauser and Browning; his was the first practical automatic pistol design; his, the first successful application of the simple blowback principle to a reliable self-loading pistol.’ But was such an epitaph deserved?
Theodore Bergmann was born on 21 May 1850 in the small Bavarian town of Sailauf, son of the Gasthaus owner Johann Bergmann and Anna Offenstein. Sailauf elementary school and a vocational school in Aschaffenburg then fired Bergmann’s passion for engineering, leading to not only the creation of a hearth and stovemaking business in Konstanz but also marriage on 30 September 1875 with Pauline Egger.
At a trade fair held in Berlin in 1879, Bergmann met Michael Flürscheim, who had entered partnership with Franz Korwan to make the Automatic GasLighting Apparatus patented in the USA by Korwan in March 1873.
Korwan & Flürscheim bought the longestablished Gaggenauer Hammerwerk to create Eisenwerke Gaggenau bei Rastatt, but Korwan died early in
1874. Eisenwerke Gaggenau Michael Flürscheim thereafter made signalling equipment and railway track alongside domestic stoves, railings and lamp posts until reconstituted in 1884 as Eisenwerke Gaggenau, Flürscheim & Bergmann.
The new business initially concentrated on domestic ironware and agricultural tools, but co-operation with chocolate manufacturer Ludwig Stollwerck led to production of Max Sielaff’s pioneering vending machine. Theodor Bergmann then patented a method of enamelling sheet-metal, creating a market for advertising signs.
The formation in 1888 of Eisenwerke Gaggenau Actiengesellschaft – employing more than 1,000 people – greatly enriched both partners, but Flürscheim soon left to promote social reform and Bergmann formed Bergmanns Industriewerke in Ottenau in 1894 to pursue his interest in firearms.
Theodor Bergmann has been classed with Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler among the most influential pioneers of the motor industry, as motor vehicles were made in Gaggenau alongside Badenia-brand bicycles until the factory was sold to Georg Wiss in 1904, to become Süddeutschen Automobilfabrik GmbH, and then to Benz & Co in 1909.
The guns
On 3 July 1878, Michael Flürscheim had been granted German Patent 3,960
to protect an air pistol, and Eisenwerke Gaggenau began making an adaptation of the Haviland & Gunn combination gun in the mid 1880s. This was duly protected by German Patent 39,962, granted on 8 October 1886, and by British Patent 4,413/86 granted on 29 March 1886 to Flürscheim & Bergmann’s agent Adolphe Arbenz.
Theodor Bergmann was an avid sports-shooter, obtaining patents in his own name – notably in Britain
– to protect a slide action shotgun, a straight-pull bolt action rifle, magazines, safety devices and targets. However, lack of precise attribution in grants to Eisenwerke Gaggenau may mask contributions by Flürscheim, who could have seen Haviland & Gunn-type airguns and the Spencer-Roper shotgun while living in New York.
Signs of success
Bergmann was aware of burgeoning interest in self-loading pistol, acquiring rights to a design credited to watchmaker Otto Brauswetter of Szegedin in Hungary. Drawings accompanying Swiss Patent 5,030 of 20
April 1892 and British Patent 10,789/92 of 7 June 1892 show not only a recoil operated shotgun locked by displacing a small transverse block in the bolt, but also a similarly-operated pistol with a clip-loaded magazine.
Output of Brauswetter-type pistols was minimal, claims that one of them appeared in the Swiss army trials held in 1893 being mistaken, but then came the Bergmann-Schmeisser. Born in Zöllnitz bei Jena on 5 March 1848, Louis Schmeisser had been apprenticed to a locksmith before returning to Suhl in 1874 to start his own gunsmithing business.
The first Schmeisser pistol, the subject of DRP 76,571 of 9 May 1893, was a blowback version of the Brauswetter, the transverse bar being used only to limit backward movement of the bolt. German Patent 78,500 of 10 July 1893 granted to Eisenwerke Gaggenau and British Patent 11,509/93 to Theodor Bergmann on 12 June 1893 both introduced a bar on the right side of the frame to connect the under-barrel main spring with the bolt. However, comparable US Patent 547,454, granted on 8 October 1895, names ‘Louis Schmeisser of Mannheim, Germany’ as assignor to Theodor Bergmann. Finally, a recoil spring inside the bolt was patented in Germany on 13 February 1894 as No. 78,881.
Who came first?
Claims made in the manual for the 1896-type pistol that:
‘The oldest patents on self-loading pistols without bolting are those on the Bergmann Pistol’ are permissible, but there is no evidence that Bergmann was responsible for the first self-loader.
The status of the Clair pistol is questionable, as the patent granted in Switzerland on 27 February 1889 refers only to gas operation in very general terms: the French patent protecting the semi-automatic shotgun and pistol dates from 18 July 1893. Better claims can be made for patents said to have been granted in Austria on 11 July
1891 to Karl Salvator and Georg Ritter von Dormus, and in Germany to 27 November 1891 by Josef Laumann and the Schönberger brothers. The Austro-Hungarian Kromar pistol may also date from the early 1890s, while German Patent 75,837 protecting the Borchardt, despite numerical precedence over 76,571, was granted only on 9 September 1893.
Bergmanns in Switzerland
Eisenwerke Gaggenau supplied a gun to the Eidgenössische Militärdepartement on 14 January 1893, responding to a request made in November 1892.
Tests against the O rd on nanzrevolv er 82, finishing on 18 March 1893, showed the pistol to be more accurate and faster firing than the service revolver although somewhat less reliable.
Oberst Roth, commanding the trials, recorded calibre as 7.75mm, and that the clip-loaded magazine held five rounds. However, as shortages of Germanmade ammunition restricted long-term experimentation, the Mi litärdep arte ment asked Theodor Bergmann to modify the pistol for the rimmed straight-case 7.5mm Ordonnanzpatrone 86. Suitablymodified cartridges loaded with 0.18gm of smokeless propellant had been readied in the Eidgenössische Munitionsfabrik in Thun by 16 May 1893, a second batch, with 0.20gm of propellant, following on 9 October.
A pistol submitted at the beginning of 1894 was recorded simply as an improvement on the gun tested the previous year. Nothing in the trial papers draws attention to changes in the action, though comparatively minimal differences between the various blowback Schmeissers may explain why no mention was made.
Two more blowbacks then came from Gaggenau towards the end of January 1894. Both of them survive: an unnumbered gun which seems to be a prototype, and another, Number 7, which represents the series-production or ‘M1894’ version of the 1893 (II) pistol. Sharing the modified 7.5mm Swiss revolver round and the same basic design as its unnumbered predecessor, No. 7’s barrel and body are rounded rather than octagonal and squared.
More trials
A Schmeisser blowback was tried against an Ordonnanzrevolver in Thun, commencing on 9 February. Using the special smokeless-propellant cartridges prepared in 1893, muzzle velocities between 220 and 233m/sec were recorded. The revolver recorded merely 151-168m/sec, owing to its shorter barrel and the use of black powder propellant.
When work recommenced on 29 November 1894, Eisenwerke Gaggenau had submitted two 8mm guns, two 7.5mm guns, a 6.5mm gun and a single 5mm specimen. There was also a 6.5mm pistol, ‘the first of its kind’, with a ‘repositioned look spring’ protected by
DRP 78,881 and, therefore, essentially a prototype M1896.
Six rounds, one in the chamber and five in the magazine, could be fired in as little as two seconds, while 30 aimed or up to 50 unaimed rounds could be fired in a minute. At a range of 6m, the Bergmann-Schmeisser bullet pierced 57 4mm wood boards and 23 0.3mm tin sheets, the revolver bullet managing 24 wood boards and only 12 sheets.
The pistols appear to have operated satisfactorily, though some extraction and ejection problems were probably encountered. However, the Swiss authorities deferred trials while the designs that had been submitted during the period in which the Bergmanns were under review could be examined.
On 6 November 1894, Oberst Gressly had informed the Militärdepartement that, in his opinion, the BergmannSchmeisser should be rejected on the grounds that widespread issue would not be repaid by the few advantages the pistol showed over the Ordonnanzrevolver 82.
Most of the Bergmann prototypes subsequently returned to Eisenwerke Gaggenau, as trials were undertaken early in 1895 with a 7.5mm 1893 (II) blowback Bergmann-Schmeisser, with an under-barrel mainspring, which had been submitted in January 1894 (possibly gun No. 7).
On 27 May 1895, von Orelli informed the Eidgenössische Militärdepartement that Waffenfabrik Neuhausen wished to submit a Mannlicher pistol for trial. Two Mannlichers, of the ‘blow-forward’ or 1894 pattern, duly arrived two days later for tests against the Bergmann and the Ordonnanzrevolver weapons.
The 8mm Mannlicher recorded the best penetration while the BergmannSchmeisser, which had a fixed barrel, proved to be the most accurate. One of the Mannlichers fired 20 rounds in 37 seconds during the rapid-fire trial, including reloading time, compared to 55 seconds for the Bergmann-Schmeisser; the
charger-loaded magazine was much easier to use than the clip-loaded swinging sideplate type.
20 Mannlichers had soon been ordered from Waffenfabrik Neuhausen and 20 Bergmann-Schmeissers from Eisenwerke Gaggenau to enable large-scale trials. By the time the Bergmanns were delivered, early in 1897, the M1896 had been substituted. However, the Borchardt-Luger was ultimately adjudged victorious and duly adopted in 1900.
The Model 1894
DRP 76,500 of 10 July 1893 protected simple blowback action in which the breech was locked at the instant of firing only by the inertia of the heavy bolt and pressure from the recoil spring.
The bolt reciprocated in the frame/ receiver against the resistance of an underbarrel spring compressed by an elongated bar running forward from the breech on the right side of the frame. A transverse bar or cross-head in the bolt abutted the body-bridge at the limit of the recoil stroke. The mainspring then returned the bolt, stripping a round from the magazine into the chamber as it did so. The external hammer was cocked as the bolt ran back, the trigger mechanism resembled that of a single-action revolver, and a disconnector prevented fully automatic fire.
The magazine side plate swung forward, taking the follower-arm with it; a clip, usually containing five rounds, was then placed in the magazine well and the side-plate returned to its original position. A small under-barrel coil spring, acting on the follower arm, applied pressure to the cartridge column. When the last cartridge had been chambered, the spent clip fell downwards and out of the gun.
The sharply tapered BergmannSchmeisser cartridges lacked extractor grooves, simply being blown from the chamber by residual gas pressure in the breech. Extraction was surprisingly efficient, but the slightest deviation as the case flew out of the breech could lead to jamming in the feed-way as the bolt closed.
Individual patterns
Blowback Bergmann-Schmeisser pistols were made in several sizes. The largest, the Bergmann Militärisches Pistole or M1894, originally chambered an 8mm rimless-grooveless round, excepting those made for the rimmed Swiss 7.5mm revolver cartridge.
A catalogue in 1896 stated that:
‘For the selfloader all … forms [of cartridge] can be used which are used for revolvers, provided smokeless powder is used’. However, even though the M1894 was touted commercially, no additional chamberings have been authenticated other than an experimental 6.5mm pattern.
Some patent illustrations show a pocket pistol with a folding trigger in front of the magazine housing, acting on the sear by way of an extension bar set into the left side of the frame. One 5mm calibre example was supplied to the Swiss in 1894 and two others have been reported, but the extent of production is unknown.
The 6.5mm pistol supplied to Switzerland in October 1894, the first of its kind, possibly bearing serial letter ‘A’, had its mainspring within the bolt, to be compressed between the inside of the bolt face and the static gun-body when the gun was fired.
Removing the bolt-extension rod that had characterised the M1894 isolated the spring from the influence of barrel heat while giving the symmetrical compression that improved reliability. But probably fewer than 10, maybe only five transitional pistols were made prior to the advent of the M1896.
Collectors’ Corner
No Bergmann-Brauswetter pistol is known to survive, and the rarity of the Schmeisser patterns makes them highly desirable. Hermann Historica sold 8mm M1894
No. 28 for €24,000 in November 2019. Detailed Information about the Eisenwerke Gaggenau pistols can be obtained from the fascinating The Eisenwerke Gaggenau “MF” (1878 to 1900) by Michael Flürscheim (www.jimmiedeesairguns.com).
Acknowledgements: My thanks are due to Karin Hegen-Wagle of Stadtarchiv Gaggenau for details of Theodor Bergmann’s private life, and to Sarah Stolzfus of Morphy’s Auctions (www.morphyauctions.com), Matt Parise of Rock Island Auctions (www. rockislandauction.com, Hermann Historica (www.hermann-historica. de) and RUAG International Holding AG (www.ruag.com) for such excellent images. Drawings were downloaded from the patent office websites in Germany and the USA, www.dpma.de and www. uspto.gov.