doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com A. Kirchhof in Schmiedeberg

Kuduae - Thank you for a comprehensive explination of the prominent features of my gun!

FJS

Most insightful info indeed but I think your opinion to be anything but humble. Anyway, I didn't say the image I posted was without reservation that of the subject sporting weapon as it was the only somewhat similar image of a similar platform I had on hand. I can stomach much of your supposition but I think the tubes may have been sourced from the Austro-Hungarian empire. About this time makers were trying to settle on a central-fire hammerless design making it more or less a transitional stage. It is possible that makers were scrubbing one off at a time, but mechanization soon would have the upper hand. If I have the location of the town of Schmiedeberg being in proximity of the Czech(Prag) & Polish(Warsaw) border, I contend that on this walkabout that A. Kirchhof either developed sourcing lines or carried with him innovations in technology from his walkabout, making it a transfer of technology. A wild guess that his walkabout just may have taken him thru Prag & Warszawa, where there was a most interesting assembling of craftsmen for such locations as Herzberg, Prag & Spandau. Take the extensive Collette family of mechanics for example in Warszawa. Some were either born or passed thru the aforementioned cities of Herzberg, Prag & Spandau. With the merging of technology in Prag & Warszawa/Varsovie/Varsowie, it is possible that A.Kirchhof tapped into that circle of makers. For the most part designers just do not seem to put their designs to production, but they source from a talented pool of most capable mechanics who can. Moreover, I do not think that A. Kirchhof designed the ensemble, but at the very least sourced the components. During this early period it is possible that he could have been designer & manufacture but the probability is very low.

Kind Regards,


Raimey
rse

At the time you are referring to, 1850 to 1900, Schmiedeberg was far away from the eastern German border. There was no Poland, Warszawa was a provincial city of the Czarist Russian empire. AFAIK the Colletes, Victor, Leon and Leopold, were a Liege, Belgium gunmaking dynasty from 1836 to 1909, with outlets in Warszawa and other places.
The former gunmaking town Herzberg with gunmakers like Tanner, Crause, Ebbecke, Welkner, St�rmer, Klawitter and others never was in eastern Germany, not even after WW2. There the Hanoverian Gewehrfabrik (arsenal) was founded by king George II of GB & Hanover in 1738. Polish names were unknown here then. When G.F.St�rmer closed his doors in 1929, the gunmaking in Herzberg came to an end. In fact, I know the town quite well, as I am responsible for the forests surrounding it. There are/were other Herzbergs farther east, but not gunmaking ones.
Mechanization was not so fast in the European guntrade as you think. In his 1884 book "Die Jagd und ihre Wandlungen" H.Corneli praises the factories of H.Pieper in Liege and Sauer & Sohn in Suhl. Pieper had a 60 hp steam engine which powered "near 400 machines" and could make guns with interchangeable parts "using the American system". Sauer & Sohn is described as the only German sporting gun maker well equipped with machines, so that little handwork is needed to make standardized guns.
What is now Czechia was then the Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Habsburg k&k Austro-Hungarian empire. Prag was the provincial capital and Weipert the gunmaking center.
Jaroslav Lugs (a Czech btw) in his 1950s standard tome "Handfeuerwaffen" has not enough praise for the Bohemian gunmakers, but writes that they never made their own barrels, but always had to buy them in from Liege, Suhl and Ferlach.
So the idea that German gunsmithes bought in rough parts from mechanics in Czechia or Poland is ridiculous.