History:
The Ortgies is a well known German pocket-pistol, which had been produced after the end of World War I first by Heinrich Ortgies in his own small gun-factory. Although the pistol was patented already on 1916-07-12 and there must have existed already some prototypes before, Ortgies started the mass-production first in 1919.
That time the Ortgies-pistol was a wellshaped newcomer with great construction details compared to the German competitors of this time, pistols like Dreyse 07, Jäger, FL, Beholla, Mauser 1914, S&S 1913 and Walther 4. One could easily imagine, that the compact, wellshaped form made good impressions. As shown in some old advertizings the Ortgies-pistol immediately had good success at sportshooters events.
After the first commercial success and the rapidly raising request Heinrich Ortgies accepted to be not longer prepared for that flood of orders. Therefore he looked for a bigger manufacturer and joined the Deutsche Werken AG in Erfurt. In 1921 the Deutsche Werke AG bought the patents und machines from Ortgies and continued the production in their factory. This took place at about serial-no.15000.
First of all just the pistol caliber .32 was in production, but Ortgies had already prepared constructions in .25ACP and .380. Under "Deutsche Werke"-era these models were put into production in 1922, first the .25ACP, later on the .380 types. As it was possible to change these pistols with a few handlings from .32 to .380 (which was forbidden by the Contract of Versailles), simply by exchanging the barrel, the production was forbidden at last.
Even though pistols of this type have not been part of the official arming of army or police, they were used by police officers. The police of Hamburg for instance was equipped with quite a lot of them.
Thousands of these pistols were exported to the USA in the mid-1920ies at dumping prices. It is to expect that quite a number of them found their way to members of the US armed forces.
In a serial-business-scandal a big number of them were exported at low prices, re-imported and sold again in Germany, where the higher fee disappeared in unlegal channels.
The production ended in 1923 (others sources say 1926/27), however the pistols were sold up to the late 1930ies with success. Even at some departments of the German Army (e.g.. Army-Court and Head-Army-Court) they were adopted, still not as ordnance-pistol..
Besides many other outraging technical details this pistol already got a partically cocked firing pin, which got completely cocked by squeezing the grip-safety, this way also releasing the safety. It is also remarkable, that not a single screw was used in this construction.
Within the time of production there came up minor variations, mainly in the markings on the slide, some nickle-plated types, but also a quite rare type with a second safety button, which was built and delivered on special demand, most of them to the Czechoslovakian police forces.
Totally 263.000 pcs. of the .32 and .380 caliber pistols were produced (and numbered together in a common series). 183.000 pcs. of the .25 caliber pistols were made (with an own numbering series), together about 446.000 pistols. Even if this is an estimation, the serial numbers found and reported make this very clear. The highest .32-serialnumber known is 262724, the highest known number in cal. .25 is no. 182625, a pistol in satin nickle- plated finish.
SYSTEM: self-cocking pistol with mass system and firing pin
CARTRIDGES : 7
CALIBRE : .25 ACP
BARREL LENGTH : 69 mm , 6 grooves right hand twisting
WEIGHT EMPTY : 390 g
TOTAL LENGTH : 134 mm
TOTAL HEIGHT : 88 mm
TOTAL WIDTH : 23 mm
TRIGGER : single action
SIGHT : fix
SAFETY : safety button and -grip
FINISH : blued
GRIPS : wood