| Edward Tinker |
11-20-2017 12:34 AM |
There is a book on the Simson company, it is in German
Copyright Edward Tinker / Graham Johnson
Quote:
Nevertheless, Arthur Simson and four of his leading employees were indicted for corruption. On April 14, 1935, Arthur Simson was jailed in Berlin’s Moabit Prison. To soften him up, the Gestapo also arrested his nephew and successor, Dr. Ewald Mayer, and Ewald’s brother Georg. After seven months, Arthur Simson was promised his freedom if he admitted his guilt and signed over all rights in his company to Fritz Sauckel. Under duress, Simson signed, posted bond, and was released.
Fearing that the confiscation of his company and his fortune was only the beginning, on Sunday, the 9th. of February 1936 he and the Mayer brothers crossed the border to the safety of Switzerland and from there emigrated to the US. From that time on, in the Simson family the day of their escape was celebrated as a second birthday, although it also signified the end of the family’s involvement in the Company they had founded. Arthur Simson died in Los Angeles in 1969 at the age of 87.
In 1936, Gauleiter Sauckel, proud of his “blow against the international Jewish conspiracy”, renamed the Simson factories as “Berlin-Suhler Waffen- und Fahrzeugwerke”, abbreviated BSW. When Wilhelm Gustloff, the leader of the Swiss Nazi Party, was assassinated, the factories became the core company of Sauckel’s “Wilhelm Gustloff Foundation”. Some who did not believe in Hitler’s thousand-year Reich gave BSW another meaning—“Bis Simson Weiderkommt”, or “Until Simson Returns”!
After the confiscation, the Nazis substantially increased the production of war materiel. From 1937 to 1944, annual production increased from 20 million to 71 million Reichmarks. Among other products, BSW produced five different anti-aircraft guns, the machine gun MG42, and the rocket launcher “Püppchen”.
On April 3, 1945, American troops occupied the undamaged factories. The Potsdam Agreement made Thuringia part of the Soviet-occupied zone, and three months later the Red Army rolled into Suhl. Originally, Soviet plans were to completely raze the factory, but they limited themselves to crating all modern machines and shipping them to Russia. BSW engineer Alfred Albrecht remembers, “Every day we used up two railroad cars of lumber for crating. We removed 4,200 machines. The Soviets were particularly proud to have captured a very recently-developed automatic polishing machine for shotgun barrels. We had to crate it overnight for shipment to Tula. The obsolete machines remained”.
Some of the buildings were dynamited by the Soviets. What remained was used by companies producing bicycles, strollers, and motorcycles; after a while, hunting gun production resumed. A large part of the goods went to Russia as reparations.
Right after the war, nobody thought about returning the property to the rightful owners. The Soviets integrated the company into the “SAG Awtowelo”, the state stock company producing motorcycles. When the DDR was founded, most factories became “Volkseigene Betriebe”, plants owned by the people. This meant another new name—“VEB Fahrzeug- und Gerätewerk Simson Suhl” (1952).
The name “Simson” was officially used on products again in 1952. With authorization from the family, small motorcycles were produced and sold under the Simson name. However, no guns were made after 1969. The production of guns was transferred to the “Ernst Thaelmann Werke”.
After the reunification of Germany, Dr. Ewald Mayer hoped to start up gun making in Suhl again. He even had the support of the second-largest gun company in the US, Sturm Ruger & Co. The project failed, however, not the least because of the questionable behavior of the German government agency set up to encourage native investors. In addition, the facilities left from the DDR era lacked the necessary modern equipment for the production of high-grade hunting guns.
The Simson family was eventually partially compensated for their losses by the German government, but gave up on gun making. However, the name still survives: Recently, the pistol, “Simson Match 1911A1” and its ammunition were products of “Jadg-und-Sportwaffen Suhl”, makers of Merkel guns. And the old factory complex in Suhl-Heinrichs is now (in 2006) the “TLG Gewerbepark Simson GmbH”, an industrial park which is home to 65 businesses. Many of the original buildings have been torn down, but the building which housed the P.08 production still stands. There is a Fahrzeugmuseum on site, which houses a collection of vehicles (mostly two-wheeled) made in the Suhl area, and mainly by Simson. In fact, the Simson motorbikes and motorcycles have a big cult following today, and are highly desirable collectors’ items. Although motorcycle and motorbike production finally ceased in autumn of 2002, a small company currently exists devoted to supplying parts and restoration services to owners of the early Simson vehicles.
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