History:
The construction of this pistol was done by Fritz Mann in 1919.
In spite of many other designers of that time Mann went his own way and by that created a pistol with lots of interesting small details. And for sure one of the most "ugly" ones, still being of reliable function. It was one of the smallest and lightest vestpocket-pistols on the market of that time too.
Among these interesting construction-details you find a removable barrel without stripping the pistol, a load indicator at the side, which is working as detent plunger for the safety-lever, and a groove around inside the chamber, where Mann came in for patent and always stated in the referring manuals, that this would work like a locked breech.
Besides his testes of a stronger .25 cartridge considering this background it also is told, that Mann intented to produce a .32 type of same design. Anyway he dropped these intentions with the production of a normal an more simple .32 construction later on.
The pistol was produced just during a short period of time from 1920 to about end of 1923. Since 1924 it was no longer mentioned in the according gun-catalougues of that time. It seems that not even 20.000 pcs have been produced.
Appearently this pistols did not sell good, being of rather strange design compared to the competitors among vestpocket-pistols of that era.
Therefore this pistol is already kind of scarce today.
Technical Datas:
SYSTEM: self-cocking pistol with mass system and firing pin
CARTRIDGES : 5
CALIBRE : .25 ACP
BARREL LENGTH : 45 mm , 6 grooves right hand twisting
WEIGHT EMPTY : 330 g
TOTAL LENGTH : 104 mm
TOTAL HEIGHT : 70 mm
TOTAL WIDTH : 18.6 mm
TRIGGER : Single Action
SIGHT : groove
SAFETY : safety-lever
FINISH : blued
GRIPS : hard rubber