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Letter from Oberndorf 2^nd February 1892			Letter from Vienna 25^th February 1892
Translation to current German			Translation to current German
Translation into English			Translation into English
Mr. Kornmayer Introduction			Paul Mauser: “Kommerzienrat”
Finding of the letters	Historical context	Görtz, Die Pistole 08	Hermann Historica	NAPCA Auto Mag	Bender Book
Acknowledgments			Mr. Görtz recollection
The entire set of letters…

Historical context

Georg Luger was born in Steinach, Tirol in 1848. He joined the Austrian army in the 1860s and left it in 1872, then 23 years old when he married. He relocated to Vienna and worked together with von Mannlicher on the improvement of the Austrian infantry rifle. His ability to speak several foreign languages enabled him to travel and demonstrate designs to governments all over Europe. This international background landed him a job at Berlin based Ludwig Loewe & Cie., which he joined in 1891. In the same year, Ludwig Loewe introduces Georg Luger to the Mauser family (letter dated 22^nd October 1891). Paul Mauser realized immediately that Georg Luger is a brilliant technician and assigned him several jobs. Luger worked as Waffentechniker from 1892 till 1897 and these two letters are the evidence of this. When Loewe decided to combine it’s small arms production facilities in Berlin with those of their Karlsruhe based ammunition facilities, both Luger and Borchardt made a transition to the newly formed company of Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken A.G. (DWM) in 1896. Loewe also transferred ownership of their interests in Mauser, Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre in Belgium (FN) and the Waffenfabrik Budapest A.G. in Hungary.

This means that the work area of Luger, in his role as consultant, was not limited to DWM but that he also represented the other daughter companies as well as the Loewe parent company during the years to come. The hand written correspondence from Georg Luger, addressed to Paul Mauser, illustrate this. Having excellent contacts in Austria, Luger was able to respond to issues that developed at competing arms companies and which could hurt his employers (and indirectly his own) finances. Owing to his role within the Loewe group, Georg Luger was able to pursue his own private projects, paid for by the company itself. This created a certain amount of tension, especially when the company felt they were being squeezed financially by Luger, trying to make money on improvements which he had developed in that same company’s time, with company budget and resources. The scheme was to develop certain improvements, protect them by patenting them in his own name and then licensing the rights to the company. Further problems were created by the fact that the development of an effective automatic (repeating) rifle design was the ‘holy grail’ of those days: A project that everybody in this relatively small world was pursuing. In this aspect, Paul Mauser and Georg Luger were adversaries as well as partners and there are examples of allegations from Mauser towards Luger about Luger trying to patent improvements that Mauser claimed as his own. The same pattern can be seen in the case of the development of the Parabellum pistol, by improving the Borchardt design and Borchardts anger about the fact that most major pistol developers copied his cartridge design (which has also been credited to Luger).

Seen in this light, the Georg Luger correspondence illustrates why he was successful at his work: He knew the relatively small world very well, he spoke his languages and travelled regularly and he was not afraid to use the same tactics as his competitors, which were not always civil and honest. He knew how to play the public opinion and that of the military acceptance boards. These factors made him both an asset and a risk factor at the same time and this may explain why he always remained somewhat of an outsider, and never rose to a senior management role within the Loewe group, of which Mauser was part.

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