Thoughts on Paul Mauser and Georg Luger

[mrerick]

The theory that Georg Luger was a freelance worker when he worked on the Luger pistol has been brought up in the other Luger forum. Also that the "GL" engraved on the rear of prototype and presentation Lugers might be related to the Loewe family instead of Luger.

I'm not sure I'd describe Luger's relationship with DWM and the Loewe group as "freelance". His interest in firearms started about 1875 with work for Mannlicher in Vienna. As a mechanical engineer he would be considered a professional and likely worked as an independent but exclusive contractor.

In the Paul Mauser personal archives and the book Gerben and Mauro wrote and I edited, we explore the relationship between Mauser and Luger and tangentially to Loewe. This starts on page 108 of Paul Mauser - His Life, Company, and Handgun Development 1838 - 1914. Gerben also discusses some of this relationship in Part 7 of the Paul Mauser Symposium recorded this April in Liege.

Correspondence from 1891 documents Loewe's introduction of Luger to Mauser in a letter from Oliven and Kosegarten urging Mauser to work with Luger to displace a contract for Mannlicher rifles being negotiated in Italy. Loewe’s commercial managers, Max Kosegarten and Oskar Oliven {Isidor Loewe’s son in law} recommend Luger to Mauser as knowing the Italian language and having moved to Loewe after working with Mannlicher.

Luger states in a letter that a Romanian officer was also working with that commission and that he worked to influence him through his wife. Luger's participation ended up being offering bribes to the wife of this rifle commission member and ultimately the effort failed for Mauser.

Subsequently, Luger was repeatedly sent on Loewe's behalf to Oberndorf to "help" Mauser which was at that point a Loewe subsidiary and wholly owned by Loewe. We see correspondence over time with increasing irritation and diversionary task assignment from Mauser who didn't find Luger's imposed help useful. Ultimately, on a trip to Oberndorf, Luger obtained a design model of the 3 lug bolt system from Mauser's research office, took it to Berlin and patented it in his (Luger's) own name - leading to decades of lawsuits.

While wholly owned by the Loewe group, Mauser's activities were competitive to those of other Loewe group gunmakers, and it Loewe took the shortest path to the greatest profits for his group, not his individual subsidiaries. This lead to playing off one subsidiary against the other in the marketplace as well as a complex International cartel agreement to slice up the market for various Loewe companies.

As a licensed engineer, Luger apparently kept some distance in his employment with Loewe allowing him to patent things in his own name without obligation to assign patents to DWM or any other Loewe entity. Mauser observed this and this probably contributed to his stance patenting the C-96 in his (Mauser's) own name.

This eventually lead to stress between Loewe and his subsidiary and probably lead to his support for Luger's redesign of Borschardt's toggle based pistol design. This would have been a direct competitive assault on Mauser's semi-automatic handgun work and in 1900, 1904 and 1908 was ultimately successful as Swiss and German military organizations selected Luger's refined design for their service pistols.

Luger promoted his work on redesigning Borschardt's pistol in a very personal manner probably to suppress the intransigent Borschardt (who felt that his design was perfect as is and didn't need improvement). It's no wonder that Luger wanted his initials placed on prototype and presentation work. Since this work came out of more of a prototype and custom shop than a manufacturing line it was, no doubt, easy to personally achieve.

If you review Luger's original patents, you'll see that they are all filed in his personal name, and never assigned to or in the name of DWM or Loewe. This was probably central to his employment relationship and contract with Loewe and DWM. Luger also personally demanded royalties on the 3 lug bolt system from Mauser, and successfully pursued this until after Mauser's 1914 death when the patent rights were eventually returned to Mauser's company. The archives contain a 1902 dated receipt to Mauser signed by Luger personally for royalties paid. Mauser used the back of the receipt as scrap paper.

Luger maintained his relationship with Loewe until 1919 when he was basically fired from DWM and Loewe. Even as an independent contractor, his work would have been exclusively contracted for by Loewe from 1891 through 1919. Luger died in Berlin 4 years later.

[Major Tom]

Very interesting! Thank you for posting.