[mrerick]

Actually, the old Mauser buildings are in use.

• The Cloister and Cloister Church are now offices for the city of Oberndorf and a beautify concert hall
• The Swedish Bureau is now offices for Oberndorf and contains a library and meeting hall on the top floor where the C96 pistols were made, and the Oberndorf Weapons Museum on the third floor. This is well worth seeing.
• Building "C" (the K98 manufacturing site) is gone, as are the Upper works and Turkenbau (which is now the site of a school)
• Building "D" where the Lugers and P.38 pistols were made is still standing. It belongs to Rhinemetal now and is subdivided into a series of industrial and office spaces.
• The Outer works are also divided up into a series of industrial and office spaces.
• Paul Mauser's mansion (which he never lived to occupy) stands just over the factory site, and is occupied by the Oberndorf City's finance and taxation department.
• The Research Shop building is still there, but I have not been in it.
• The old original home of Gebruder Mauser & Co. where they made sights for the original rifle contract was there in 2012, but has since been torn down and replaced with a shopping venue.
• Ott-Helmuth von Lossnitzer's home is still standing above the Mauser factory site. He was the technical director of Mauser during and just prior to WW-II. This fascinating man came to the USA after the war under operation Paperclip and worked at Springfield Armory, and then as a consultant in Racine Wisconsin where he died.
• The bases of the cable system installed across the Neckar valley at Oberndorf are still visible above the city within a small drive and hike. These held cables that interfered with planes flying over the valley during WW-II.
• The site of an impressed labor camp is now a memorial to those that died during WW-II, and the site of a RHSA "re-education" camp is marked a few miles from town. Workers during WW-II traveled on foot and by bicycle between a number of nearby camps and the factory each day.

The Mauser Archive book just published by Mauro and Gerben has photos taken inside the C96 manufacturing line and in the Mauser Research shop where many of the prototype designs were made. There is a particularly nice one showing both apprentice and experienced gunsmiths working together. It's also in the documentary.



Oberndorf is a wonderful place to visit. It's about an hour from Stuttgart by fast train. The Mauser family is interred in Oberndorf's cemetery, as are the Feederle brothers and other famous Mauser personnel.