Our Thomas/kaweco's Heidelberg Fountain Pen Museum

[hari317]

Thomas, it is wonderful to hear that your dream of the pen museum has finally come true. Thanks Bill for sharing this news, I had missed it due to my long absence.

 

Thomas, today, I am using the Mercedes 65 that you gave me at Heidelberg. The Degussa OB on it is heavenly.

 

 

Cheers!

Hari

[tmurfet]

I just came across this wonderful message thread. I'm so very disappointed that the photos have gone. This, to my mind, is a valuable conversation, a little piece of history that needs to be preserved. Let us discuss locating the photos and restoring them here, or in a new message thread. Please!!

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

I have some pictures on Imgur....others perhaps in the guts of my computer that can be moved to Imgur.

The hard part will be trying to relabel the pictures to what had gone before.

Will attend to this in the morning.

[Kaweco]

Original museum pics Kaweco

1:) Old Kaweco 1900 - 1929

Kaweco safeties and eye droppers in hard rubber. first feltip casein (blue), combo propelling lead pen and alterning currancy searcher (green), Ko- Mio propelling pencils in BHR and casein (red).

Ink containers duck and bottle in BHR.

2.) History of the Kaweco Sport

Very small BHR safety from 1911

First octagonal safety in BCHR

Piston fillers in BHR

Colored piston fillers made by plastic mold in process

Two green Kaweco Sport Olympia, the last Heidelberg made Kaweco from 1972

New Ice Sport Kaweco from Nürnberg

3.) Kaweco piston fillers and propelling pencils from the Kaweco 2.nd generation in Wiesloch near Heidelberg

black and colored celluloid

[Bo Bo Olson]

Thanks Thomas,

His museum would be 'larger' had they allowed him to put in a second floor industrial gitter, but that year some drunk tourist fell off a tall monument in Heidelberg and broke his fool head. The ball point using city council worried about that and said falling down drunk fountain pen museum visitors shouldn't have the chance to share the thrilling three seconds with other dead fools.

 

Various pen making machinery.

Something to do with nibs I think.

 

 

Drills out pen bodies.

More mystery stuff. I forget easy.

 

 

Some sort of nib machine. Thomas has a big one his height and width. He has a picture of him and it being transported by forklift.

 

Rare old celluloid pen making sticks. Thomas has been offered great money for that, but won't sell of course.

 

Side of a six pen, pen making machine.

Something to do with nibs.

A few of his antique pens....I've a few more pictures in the guts of my computer.

 

A very beautiful lizard pen form a pile of unsorted ones of the same brand. A minor brand whose name of course I forgot. I had been overwhelmed by a flood of pens and machinery.

 

It is well worth looking into the archives for Kaweco/Thomas's comments. He is a real scholar of fountain pens made in and near Heidelberg, once the Fountain Pen capitol of the world. 

I learned from Thomas who had an uncle working for Kaweco back when they made other great pens like the Dia., not just the Sport. I don't collect Kaweco...I'd chased Osmia instead.

Kaweco used the best nib in the world from 1900-1914 US made Morton nibs. April of 1914 Kaweco buys machinery and US trainers to train their work force...then comes August.

Bunsen burners, tiny hand sized anvils, nib tips covered in potato chunks  to keep the tipping from burning. Hand hammered and annealed...1930 the ex owner goes bankrupt on the market, not the company....new management. So the new owner cut the best nib in the world, and Kaweco fell to Soennecken and MB level.

 

Osmia, second tier Faber Castel, Herlitz and their grand Luxor subbrand. A fella named Mercedes who worked for MB made a good pen in Heidelberg.

 

Once Reform was a great pen....not that cheap 3rd tier 1745.. Reform was much an export pen. As soon as the War was over his wholesalers sent him cash in advance so he could start making pens again. I have a War Reform (and sub-brand and or made for Centa) and both are take to war solid, which he made also before the war. (War pens have pressed normally with some sort of lines or hatching to press the plastic harder where the cap rings should have been. I have some 4 war pens.)

Reform like Soennecken didn't jump on the ball point market. I've seen pictures of his early '50's pens....I need some, ultra modern for the day....still so well made. Mid 1950's he closes his factory rather than to make a cheaper pen. A few years later he sells is factory to Mutschler; a third tier pen maker.....who developed lots of cheap pens with Reform's name on it. Like the 1745 and a few others that I have. Mutschler in the early 2000's sells it's machinery to China.

 

Palettes of caps are hand matched with pallets of nibbed pen bodies from China ....so the 1745 is again 'made' in Germany. Was before it went to China a nice good cheap pen, still is.

 

OH, in Thomas's museum Is a 6by4 foot picture of the nib manufacturer Rupp and his workers. He was hands on boss, was just as worker dressed as his workers. Had to look twice to see who the boss was.

I only have one Rupp nib my first and still springiest maxi-semi-flex nib...the other two I saw and bid on went to others. 1922-@1970

Osmia (Boehler brothers) bought the osmium nibbing compound patent from a University of Heidelberg professor in 1922 that was so good they named their brand new pen company after it, Osmia. 1932 Osmia again broke (not having an office supply company like Soennecken, MB, Pelikan and later Geha), lost it's nib factory for debt,  to Degussa the gold maker in Pfortzeheim some 40-50 miles away....but the workers refused to move so far awa,y so the nib factory stayed. Making the same great nibs for Osmia, anyone Osmia had been making for and others. Eventually for Soennecken and Geha also. Great nibs.

1938 Bock opens it's nib factory. 1938 Boehler brothers split the Osmia company Faber Castell had been buying in....so through the '70's Boehier made fountain pens.

1938 or so pens from Boehlier. He used the same model numbers in cases as his brother's Osmia company. The brother that split was right. Caber Castel bought up all of Osmia by 1950 and well with in the decade erased all but the famous Osmia diamond on the nib....egoistic bought a duke(Graf) title fools, buy a top brand pen company, having a second tier fountain pen, then erase it. Boehler lasted until the '70's with school pens.

 

A lot of companies making pens in or around Heidelberg, and I'm sure I've forgotten much of what Thomas tells me when we meet at the flea market.

 

These are mine, not Thomas's. Boehler mdl 54 Gold full tortoise, gold was his second level. And a couple Boehler BCHR pens with Osmia size markings......kept the convenient BL or BR....width and which foot the oblique is ground too. Instead of the simple OB....and you look to see which foot it is ground too. Of course in OBB, OM & OF......I just don't have the whole smear.

Not using German nibs in gold plating was not allowed. Could be Italian so Boehler could sneak a bit of gold looks in when gold was forbidden and confiscated in the summer of '38 by Hitler.

[Kaweco]

Osmia 1920 - 1932

Kind Regards

Thomas

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

What colorful pens.

I only have one matching letter opener and stamp (need to get my initials on it.) . And not in a matching case.

[tmurfet]

I can't match your wonderful contributions but here are some sixties pens I'm trying to find out more about. Is the code on the instruction sheet a date code? I did order the Kaweco book "Writing Instruments Since 1883" to help me in my research - waiting for that. The nibs on these are a wonder to write with, two of them 14c gold, the KF especially is a revelation when compared to my experience with newer fine nibs. Thank you for restoring all these wonderful photos.