My favourite Stoewers

Recently, Stoewer typewriters caught my eye. I have had two in my collection for some time, first a Stoewer Elite, then a Stoewer model 4. These do look special, the number 4 for its elegant shape and beautiful decoration resembling Art Nouveau; the Elite for its extravagantly placed ribbon spools.

Stoewer 4, ca. 1908

Stoewer Elite, ca. 1913

Then I discovered the Stoewer portable, which was placed on the market in 1926.  Apparently only 7800 of these nice 4-bank portables were made. I had spotted them occasionally on ebay, and got lucky a couple of weeks ago. When it arrived by mail, I discovered it was not in good shape at all: dirty, feet missing, no pulling cord for the carriage. I could replace the feet with perfectly fitting items sold as door stoppers at a local warehouse. The cleaning was quickly done - at this occasion I discovered the carriage could be taken off very easily by opening two latches on the back of the typewriter. Replacing the drawing cord was a bit of an exercise, fiddling around to find the good length for the string (I used a very thin metal string used in ship model making) and the right tension for the spring. Et voilà:

Stoewer portable typewriter n° 124002

door stoppers as new feet. notice also the latch on the outer corner, easy release for the carriage

Now, the fate of the Stoewer factory was somewhat unfortunate. As of 1926, the Bernhard Stoewer A.G. met with economic difficulties. Although the typewriter production was doing well, with high demand especially for the Kleinschreibmaschine - the portable -, sales of sewing machines and bicycles sharply declined, so that the overall economic situation of the entreprise was gloomy. A rescue attempt in 1929 did not yield success, and in August 1930 production came to a halt, followed by the liquidation of the company in 1931.
This was unfortunate, as by this time, Stoewer had developed a successor model of the Stoewer Portable, which was essentially ready for production. This improved model was designed by the prolific Viennese engineer Leopold Ferdinand Pascher (1896 - ca. 1945).
At this point, Rheinmetall, a German guns and artillery producer who had started producing typewriters in an attempt to diversify production after World War I, bought the new typewriter and equipment. It was placed in production as Rheinmetall portable in 1931.

Rheinmetall portable, n° 258439

The two models are quite similar, already from the outside. Notice the ribbon selector button, the overall shape, and the equally detachable carriage.

This is it (for today).