CLASSIC GUNS
Bergmann Bayard M1910/21
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It is hard to imagine the American West of the late 19th century, an era defined in books and movies by the presence of Colt, S&W and Remington revolvers, without thinking of anything but revolvers. But the truth is, the semiauto pistol was already a reality when the Wild West was still pretty wild.
In the hands and oddly shaped holsters of many Americans were Borchardts, Mausers and Bergmanns, unusual-looking sidearms chambered for a variety of metric calibers ranging from 7.63 and 7.82mm to 9mm Largo. As the world was changing at the dawn of the 20th century, so, too, was the design of the handgun.
There are three examples that most collectors regard as the "Triple Crown" of primitive German autos: the Borchardt design of 1893, the Mauser C96 Broomhandle and the Bergmann M1910. There were other self-loaders (the 1896 Mannlicher and the Bergmann M1896), but this trio comprises the best designs conceived during an era when the time-honored wheelgun was about to become outmoded.
The idea of a self-loading pistol with a cache of cartridges stored within a magazine was actually pioneered in the 1880s. It was the work of Austrian designer Joseph Laumann, whose patent, it is believed, was signed over to the Osterreichische Waffenfabrik Gesellschaft at Steyr in Austria, where one of the very first autos, the SchOnberger-Laumann, was manufactured beginning in 1892. Though not a commercial success, the SchOnberger was succeeded by the Mannlicher in 1894, a superior design that caught the attention of arms-makers the world over.
There were numerous attempts at perfecting the self-loader throughout the early 1890s, but the first real success was the Borchardt Automatic Repeating Pistol patented in 1893 by Hugo Borchardt and his colleague Georg Luger. This was to become the underpinning for the most famous semiauto of all time, the Borchardt-Luger 9mm Parabellum introduced in 1900.
Hugo Borchardt and Georg Luger's design, however, wasn't the only means to an end. Both Paul Mauser and Theodor Bergmann found another equally successful method of creating an auto in the 1890s. Mauser and Bergmann came upon a similar approach, utilizing a bolt mechanism to extract and eject the spent cartridge casing and cock the hammer on the recoil stroke and, as the bolt rebounded, strip a round from the magazine and lock it into battery (a simple explanation for what was a relatively complicated operation).
Mauser patented his design in 1895 and produced his first prototype on March 15. The success of the Broomhandle Mauser, which was manufactured until 1939, is only eclipsed by the Luger 9mm, a design that has remained in production for more than a century.
Bergmann introduced his first auto-loader in 1894. More entrepreneur than engineer, he had acquired the 1892 patent rights to Hungarian watchmaker Otto Brauswetter's design for a locked-breech self-loader. Bergmann employed firearms designer Louis Schmeisser to make Brauswetter's pistol a reality in 1893. The first design, utilizing a hesitation lock, was not overly successful and was followed a year later by the improved M1894 Bergmann-Schmeisser, utilizing a simple blowback design. The 1894 pistol was succeeded two years later by the improved Bergmann M1896, of which more than 5,000 were produced in calibers ranging from 5mm to 6.35mm and 8mm. All three Bergmann cartridges, however, were regarded as underpowered, and the gun was still awkward to load.
The design of all early Bergmanns utilized a magazine inserted by releasing a pivoting sideplate on the magazine well, inserting the rounds and then closing and securing the cover. This was not an ideal arrangement. Bergmann and Schmeisser went back to the drawing board again and in 1897 made another change, introducing a removable magazine and the basic pistol configuration that would become characteristic of all future Bergmann designs. The new M1897 was chambered for a 7.8mm Bergmann round similar to the 7.63x25mm used in the Mauser Broomhandle. Alas, this design was not the success Bergmann had hoped for, and only around 800 were built.
