History:
The "Bär"-pistol was the first pocket pistol produced by J.P. Sauer & Sohn. Itīs origin is from the year 1897/98, some time before the great success of the pocket-automatics. The production at J.P Sauer & Sohn started around 1900.
Inventor of this constuction was Burkhard Behr, a Russian citizen living in Switzerland, who appearently also gave the name to this pistol. The regarding patents in the USA and Britain were registered to his name too, but much to amazement in Germany it was done by a Miss Valerie Schlapal of Zürich. There is nothing known about the reasons for this or about the connection of this person to the inventor.
The design reminds to a revolver with flat drum. But this is a turnable and by a latch lockable block with four chambers, two of them always placed behind a double-barrel. The head of the hammer bears a turnable firing-pin, which is actuated by an internal mechanism to move from upper to lower position, and vice versa, with any operation of the trigger. A shell-remover rod is integrated in the grip.
The pistol originally was made for an own 7mm cartridge, but later on, as the caliber .25 ACP took place on the market, it also was produced in this caliber. It was very popular at that time because of the flat design, but as automatic-pistols were intruding the market more and more it became uninteresting and disappeared from the market.
It is already kind of rare today.
Technical Datas:
SYSTEM: Turning-block pistol with internal hammer
CARTRIDGES : 4
CALIBRE : .25 ACP
BARREL LENGTH : 2 barrels, 62 mm , 4 grooves right hand twisting
WEIGHT EMPTY : 340 g
TOTAL LENGTH : 156 mm
TOTAL HEIGHT : 116 mm
TOTAL WIDTH : 28.2 mm
TRIGGER : Double Action Only
SIGHT : fix
SAFETY : none
FINISH : blued
GRIPS : hard rubber or wood