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Today Simson may be better known for shotguns, rifles, and post-war motor scooters than for pistols. The family business was founded around 1856 by two brothers, Löb and Moses Simson, in Suhl, Germany.
Initially an ironworks making carbon steel axes, chisels, halberds, and pipe, they soon began subcontracting to make gun barrels, bayonets and ramrods.
After the death of Löb, Moses partnered with a mechanic and gunmaker, Karl Luck, to found Gewehrfabrik Simson und Luck, which manufactured rifles. After the death of Moses Simson in 1868, the company
continued in business under Simson’s widow, Luise, and Karl Luck. Karl Luck left the company in 1884 and its name was changed to Simson & Companie. Frau Simson turned over management of
the company to her sons, Moses and Gerson. When gun sales waned, the company undertook the manufacture of bicycles (from 1896) and automobiles (from 1911 to 1934), as well as shotguns, hunting rifles,
bayonets, swords, and scabbards. Simson built the first production engine ever to have 4 valves per cylinder. During the Great War (World War I), Simson made carbines, machine guns, light cannon,
aircraft engines, and an ambulance.
Following the treaty of Versailles, the Inter-Allied Disarmament Commission banned the manufacture of military weapons in Germany, except for export, and between 1919 and 1924 supervised the destruction of
millions of small arms in Germany. In the early 1920s the German military and police requested permission from the Commission to obtain parts for the repair of Parabellum 08 (Luger) handguns, and to
manufacture new guns. While agreeing to the request for parts as well as for new pistols, the Disarmament Commission insisted that the old arsenal at Erfurt (where military Lugers had previously been made)
remain closed, and ordered that Erfurt’s Parabellum manufacturing equipment and spare parts be shipped to the Simson factory in Suhl. In 1925, after lengthy negotiations, Simson was given a government
contract to manufacture 10,000 Parabellum pistols. They became the leading weapon maker in Central Germany (Thuringia) and the only licensed maker of machine guns and military pistols. Simson’s
success aroused the ire of other gun makers in Germany. In March of 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor, the Association of Zella-Mehlis Gun Manufacturers, led by Fritz Walther, sent Hitler a letter
complaining that Simson held a monopoly that was forcing them out of business.
Because he was a Jew, Arthur Simson (the grandson of the company founder, Moses Simson) and several of his employees were eventually jailed by the Nazis in 1935. After seven months in prison, Simson was forced
to admit evading income taxes and to sign the rights to his company over to Nazi Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel. A few months after his release on bail, Simson fled to Switzerland and eventually to the United States
of America. Sauckel renamed the company Berlin-Suhler Waffen- und Fahrzeugwerke (BSW), but after the assassination of the Swiss Nazi Party leader Wilhelm Gustloff, Sauckel renamed it Gustloff Werke.*
The Parabellum machinery in the Simson factory was removed to the Heinrich Krieghoff Waffenfabrik, which was also located in Suhl.
The earliest Simson pistol, known as the Type I, or the Model 1922, was marked on the left side of the frame with the Simson logo and the inscription “WAFFENFABRIKEN SIMSON & CO. SUHL,”
and on the right side of the slide “SELBSTLADEPISTOLE SIMSON D.R.P.” The exposed portion of the barrel was marked “CAL 6.35”. The
serial number is located on the front of the grip strap. The earliest examples, which I call Type IA, had 12 slide serrations and no grip screws. The wooden grips were held on by spring latches.
Possibly only a hundred or so of these early Type IAs were made (please contact me if you have one). They may have been factory prototypes with very limited distribution, though there are no records to prove this one way or another. For what I refer to as the Type IB, the screwless wooden grip was replaced by a plastic one with a single screw at the bottom, and the name Simson in script at an angle of about 40 degrees across the grip. The slide serrations were reduced to 7 and were more widely spaced. The circular grooves on the safety lever were replaced with fine checkering.
In 1926 Simson updated the gun to make it easier and cheaper to manufacture, and the new version is known as the Type II, or the Model 1926. For some reason, it has become known as the Model 1927 in the
U.S. There are said to be minor differences in the lockwork between the two types, but I have been unable to document them. The two guns have similar markings, and are identical in mechanical
function. The frame was milled flat on the sides all the way to the front, and on the later production guns the slide serrations were increased to 8 (some early Type II guns still have 7).
Both models are scarce in the U.S., and we do not know how many of each type were made. However, we do know that serial number 2774 is a Type II, which means that possibly not many more than 2500 of the Type I
guns were made. But more data is necessary. (If you have a Simson, particularly a Type I, please send me the serial number and I will update my list here.* I am also interested in very high serial
numbered guns, in order to determine how many Type II pistols were made.)
The Simson 6.35mm pocket pistol is a simple blowback design with the extractor and ejection port on top of the gun. The take-down latch is on the forward portion of the trigger guard, and the gun is much easier
to disassemble than the Browning pocket pistols of similar size. One simply has to remove the magazine, pull the trigger (after ascertaining that the gun is unloaded), press the latch, and draw the slide forward off the receiver. The recoil spring guide rod is removed from the rear of the barrel lug, and then the spring and barrel are easily separated from the slide. The connector is pressed backward with a finger and the safety latch is rotated downward to the vertical and pulled out the left side of the gun until held in place by a spring-loaded plunger. Then the slide guide/sear support block is pushed forward slightly and hooked out of the receiver along with the connector. The connector and slide guide can then be separated. The gun’s only screws are the two that hold the grips on.
The quality of manufacture appears to be quite high. There are no machine marks on the interior or exterior of the gun. The slide is almost circular in section and the receiver is shaped to fit it
precisely. The forward end of the slide has a downward projection that supports the end of the guide rod, and the barrel lug supports the rear portion of the barrel/slide assembly. The only true rail is
at the rear of the gun, as part of the sear support. A typical Browning-style stirrup connects the trigger to the sear. As the slide retracts, it engages two ears on the connector and forces it backward
and out of contact with the trigger. When the slide is forward, the trigger engages the connector, and when the trigger is pulled the sear is levered downward, releasing the spring-loaded striker. When
the safety is turned backward a full 180°, exposing the ‘S’ on the left side of the receiver, the connector is disengaged from the trigger and the sear and firing pin are prevented from moving.
There is no magazine safety.
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* The Nazis made an example of the Simson Company. ‘ ...Wilhelm Gustloff ... was an ardent Swiss Nazi shot dead in Bern by a Jewish student
named David Frankfurter on 4 February 1936. To honor Gustloff, the Nazis had given his name to one of the first “Aryanized” companies of the Reich, in this
case a firm formerly owned by the Jews Arthur and Julius Simson. The Simsons’ company, the Suhler Weapons and Vehicle Works, had received the dubious privilege of
being the only Jewish firm to receive contracts from the German army after the Treaty of Versailles. That Jews should be entrusted with defense contracts, of course,
enraged the Nazis. The national press had pilloried the Simsons since the 1920s, accusing them of embezzlement and demonizing them as the spearhead of a world Jewish
consipracy to emasculate the German armed forces. By 1935, the Gauleiter of Thuringen, Fritz Sauckel, finally succeeded in throwing the Simson brothers in jail and
appropriating their company.’ --The Business of Genocide, p. 191.
During the war, Gustloff Werke, which was under the management of Fritz Walther, opened a factory at the Buchenwald concentration camp to manufacture
carbines, and later machine guns, using slave labor.
Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, who was in charge of the Nazi slave labor program, was hanged for war crimes in 1946. Fritz Walther lived on to revive the
Walther company in the ‘50s and died in 1966. Arthur Simson died in Los Angeles in 1969. The Simson family eventually received partial reparation for their
losses from the German government.
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