Peter Paul von Mauser (born Peter Paul Mauser) (27 June 1838 – 29 May 1914) was a German weapon designer, manufacturer,

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

and politician.

Early life

Mauser was born in Oberndorf am Neckar, in what was then the

Kingdom of Württemberg The Kingdom of Württemberg ( ) was a German state that existed from 1806 to 1918, located within the area that is now Baden-Württemberg. The kingdom was a continuation of the Electorate of Württemberg, which existed from 1803 to 1806. Geogr ...

. His father was originally a shoemaker and then made leather scabbards for the Royal Rifle Factory in Oberndorf.

Career

Paul Mauser and his brother Wilhelm, who had become

gunsmiths A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds guns. The occupation differs from an armorer, who usually replaces only worn parts in standard firearms. Gunsmiths do modifications and changes to a firearm that may require a very ...

, first lived in modest conditions. Paul Mauser developed various firearms with his brother, and later he founded the company ''Gebr Mauser'' with him, which finally took over from the royal manufacture. Together with his brother Wilhelm Mauser, Peter Paul Mauser designed the Mauser Model 1871 rifle, the first of a successful line of

Mauser Mauser, originally the Königlich Württembergische Gewehrfabrik, was a German arms manufacturer. Their line of bolt-action rifles and semi-automatic pistols was produced beginning in the 1870s for the German armed forces. In the late 19th and ...

rifles and pistols. The rifle was adopted as the Gewehr 71 or Infanterie-Gewehr 71 and was the first metal cartridge weapon of the

German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...

. While Wilhelm handled the business side of the factory, Paul proved to be the more technically capable engineer. Peter Paul von Mauser made significant contributions to bolt action rifle design and successfully combined and improved various bolt action engineering concepts. The

company bolt action development resulted in the Gewehr 98 and

Karabiner 98k The Karabiner 98 kurz (; ), often abbreviated Karabiner 98k, Kar98k or K98k and also sometimes incorrectly referred to as a K98 (a K98 is a Polish carbine and copy of the Kar98a), is a bolt-action rifle chambered for the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartri ...

rifle series that were the latest in a line of Mauser bolt-action rifles that started with the Mauser Model 1889 and were adapted in 1889 and the 1890s as service rifles by several countries. The bolt-action design used for the Gewehr 98 was patented by Paul Mauser on 9 September 1895. Besides rifles, Paul Mauser also developed handguns, with the first Mauser designed handgun being the Mauser C78

revolver A revolver is a repeating handgun with at least one barrel and a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold six cartridges before needing to be reloaded, ...

. In 1896, Paul Mauser would develop the C96 pistol, which was one of the first semi-automatic pistols in history. Initially, Mauser's designs were more successful abroad than in Prussia, but the Prussian Rifle Review Board in Spandau opted for the domestically developed 1888 rifle. Mauser designed an improved model of this rifle for the Imperial Order . The name of Mauser is inseparable from the construction of the 1893 infantry rifle for Spain, 1894 carbine and 1896 infantry rifle for Sweden, with model rifles for Peru, Belgium, Argentina, the Brazil (1894), Chile (1895), then Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico (1902),

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

and Turkey. Deliveries to these countries make the Mauser name a world-renowned guarantee of quality for precise weapons. The construction of the Gewehr 98 rifle was personally praised by Kaiser Wilhelm II on April 5, 1898. Mauser lost his left eye in 1901 as a result of a cartridge explosion during a test firing of the self-loading C98. Mauser also designed the 7.65×53mm Mauser (1889) and

7×57mm Mauser The 7×57mm Mauser (designated as the 7 mm Mauser or 7×57mm by the SAAMI and 7 × 57 by the C.I.P.) is a first-generation smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. It was developed by Paul Mauser of the Mauser company in ...

(1892) rifle cartridges. These cartridges were high-performance service cartridge designs compared to other contemporary

smokeless powder Finnish smokeless powder Smokeless powder is a type of propellant used in firearms and artillery that produces less smoke and less fouling when fired compared to black powder. Because of their similar use, both the original black powder formula ...

service cartridges such as the 8mm Lebel (1886), 8×50mmR Mannlicher (1890) and .303 British (1891).

Entry into politics

Mauser was a member of the German Reichstag for the National Liberal Party from 1898 to 1903, a party that appeared in the Kingdom of Württemberg as a German party. In the Reichstag, he represents the 8th district of Württemberg (Freudenstadt, Horb, Oberndorf, and Sulz). He was nominated as a candidate thanks to an alliance of the Conservatives, the Farmers' Federation, and the National Liberals and after his election to the Reichstag he joined the Group of National Liberals as a guest.Carl-Wilhelm Reibel: Handbuch der Reichstagswahlen 1890–1918. Bündnisse, Ergebnisse, Kandidaten. (= Handbücher zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, Band 15.) Halbband 2, Droste, Düsseldorf 2007, (), S. 1228–1232.

Death

Peter Paul von Mauser died on 29 May 1914, 2 months before World War 1 started.

Awards

* from the Association of German Engineers (1912)

Designs

Rifles

* Mauser Model 1871 * Mauser Model 1889 *

Mauser Model 1893 The Mauser Model 1893 is a bolt-action rifle commonly referred to as the Spanish Mauser, though the model was adopted by other countries in other calibers, most notably the Ottoman Empire. The M1893 was based on the experimental M1892 rifle, whi ...

* Swedish Mauser * Gewehr 98

Handguns

* Mauser C78 "Zig-Zag" (1878) * Mauser C96 (1896)

Cartridges

* 7.65×53mm Mauser (1889) *

(1892)

Literature

* Paul Gehring (1941), Wilhelm (1834–1882) und Paul Mauser (1838–1914): Erfinder und Fabrikanten von Gewehren und sonstigen Handfeuerwaffen. In: Hermann Haering und Otto Hohenstatt (Hrsg.), ''Schwäbische Lebensbilder'', Bd. 2. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, P. 314–339. * Wolfgang Seel: Mauser, Paul von. In: ''Neue Deutsche Biographie'' (NDB). Band 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, , P. 448 f.

References

External links

Paul-mauser-archive.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mauser, Paul 1838 births 1914 deaths People from Oberndorf am Neckar People from the Kingdom of Württemberg National Liberal Party (Germany) politicians Members of the 10th Reichstag of the German Empire Firearm designers Ballistics experts Gunsmiths 19th-century German inventors 19th-century German businesspeople 20th-century German businesspeople