Pelikan 100 nib

[joss]

2 hours ago, stoen said:

• a Pelikan 100 pen cost approx. 13.50 Reichsmark (RM)
• a Pelikan 100N sold for about 16.50RM
• a RapPen (entry level pen) cost less: a half of that

[...]

With a teacher monthly sallary of about 500+ RM, a Pelikan 100 was affordable to those who needed it.

 

Which year are you referring to for these data?

[mana]

You can find the pricing info from digitized catalogues > https://www.pelikan-collectibles.com/en/Pelikan/Catalogues/index.html

[stoen]

7 hours ago, OMASsimo said:

Their first tier pens (1xx) were luxury goods for the well-off people only.

I believe having seen the pre-war MontBlanc 1xx series piston fillers (without luxury decoration) listing from 24.50RM upward. The famous L139 costing around 45RM.

 

As opposed to that, Pelikan modular engineering guaranteed equal performance without the buyer being lured into buying decorated pens hoping they would also give better performance. A great example of fair trade!

🙂

Even their “luxury” overlay pens weren’t that costy. I believe having seen the nowadays famous T111 listing for only 10 or 12 RM more back then, perhaps.

 

I am referring to the prices at the time of the particular models having been released. I see @mana having discoverd digitized early Pelikan catalogues. Thanks!

👍

The IBIS was considered particularly sturdy for extensive everyday use and nasty inks...

[mana]

In 1938 the prices (in Reichsmark/RM) were 13.50 for a 100, 17.50 for a 100N and 7.50 for an IBIS 130 (all with 14K nibs I assume).

 

In 1951 the prices (in Deutsche Mark/DM) were 25.00 for a standard 400 with a 14K nib, 28.00 for stiffer D nibs (as they had more gold), 100N cost 23.50 with 14K a gold nib, 26.50 with a stiffer D nib and 18.50 with a CN nib. 130 IBIS was 14.50 with 14K a gold nib, 17.00 with a stiffer D nib and 10.50 with a CN nib.

 

No mention of Rappen prices but I would assume they cost less than the IBIS.
 

[joss]

8 hours ago, stoen said:

Even their “luxury” overlay pens weren’t that costy. I believe having seen the nowadays famous T111 listing for only 10 or 12 RM more back then, perhaps.

 

The retail price of the 1938 Pelikan Toledo was 27 RM, twice the amount of the Pelikan 100. I am trying to figure out where you found that a teacher monthly salary in 1938 Germany was 500+ RM, which looks a bit steep to me.

[mana]

54 minutes ago, joss said:

 

The retail price of the 1938 Pelikan Toledo was 27 RM, twice the amount of the Pelikan 100. I am trying to figure out where you found that a teacher monthly salary in 1938 Germany was 500+ RM, which looks a bit steep to me.

Way less than that. Found an interesting thread on the topic of wages in Nazi Germany > https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=236192

[stoen]

10 hours ago, joss said:

500+ RM, which looks a bit steep to me.

Family word of mouth, don’t have receipts. Probably also depended on type of school or acadeic institution.

🙂

Even if half of it was true, a Pelikan 100 was still affordable, IMHO. Please, pardon me if I’m wrong.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Nice link Mana!

There were in the '30s some 120 fountain pen makers in Germany; many just screwing pens (some also adding a sac) together selling at the local newfangled Department store or the local news-paper kiosk.

The Corner Pen Shoppe sold all levels of pens.

As said MB ahd @ 20 sub-brands; for workers.

 

I have a dozen of broken pens from makers I never heard of....

Workers in the US in the '30's did not buy a Shaffer New Balance or a Paker Vac, much less the 'new' P-51.....they bought second tier Esterbrooks (Ok 1940 but there were enough of that level selling to workers), and second tier Wearevers....or third tier Wearevers or the 4th tier Wearever made for anyone who want a few hundred or a few thousand pens.

Wearever was the biggest pen factory in the world back then.

 

Though I think buying a car was more a middle class thing, in gas was very, very expensive (and has remained so) ; along with insurance (one of the reasons US Army brats didn't have a car in HS over here and that '30 years later)  and where could you go with it? ....and pay for a Gasthous room for a family....and meals.

Folks thought nothing of walking 20-30 miles, to go work on  a 'family' farm, for a week or two 'on vacation' to get  paid in take home food, and that late as the '60's. 

 

Any car in Europe was a Status thing, in one lived very close to work. It wasn't much needed like in the States....where distances between anything at all was and still is vast.  

 

If one was going to the mandatory two week Government (per-Hitler really) 'Health Cure', trains would be affordable(if not paid for)  for that and I think food board was included in the health cure areas. Most of course too the train.

 

It wasn't until nearly 1960 or a bit later, that German workers had enough money to buy a powerful enough car (30-35 horsepower (high mountain passes) )  that could drive to cheap Italy on vacation.  The word Ciao entered the German language from Status Folks coming back saying hello in Italian; to show one had the money to travel far....is still in the German language, but no longer has much meaning left to it. Some folks still say it.

 

The very first BMW I ever saw in the States was....

Isetta....(@ 1960)..........and I still seen them on the road in 1964 when I got to Germany. single-cylinder. Two seater + small child. They were no longer common, in the VW was affordable....

And I still saw Messerschmidt two seat cars on the road....not many but not seldom....years after the VW took over....Germans had a fear of debt; so one saved a long and hard; paying cash.

[stoen]

8 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

The very first BMW I ever saw in the States was....

Isetta...

I suppose the Isetta might have been a FRG state (partly) sponsored car. Its small footprint was enriched with a unique feature: a large front door acces which was particularly suitable for people with motorical dificulties. There were many people who were severely wounded in the WWII and that little car improved their quality of living.

 

As for the connection between urban and countryside population, I remember this exchange of goods and services being rather comon in Europe. Many urban dwellers had families in the country, who supported them with farm products. In return, they were expected to give accomodation to kids who came to the cities for schooling.

 

The illiteracy was still a “public plague” in some remote parts of the post WWII welfare states of western world. In this sense, having and using a good pen might have been regarded as a status symbol: a proof of literacy and intellectual profession.

[joss]

10 hours ago, mana said:

Way less than that. Found an interesting thread on the topic of wages in Nazi Germany > https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=236192

 

I had found the same info, therefore my interest on where the 500+RM amount came from.

I think that it would be good to include references when bold statements are made.

[mana]

34 minutes ago, joss said:

I think that it would be good to include references when bold statements are made.

I heartily agree with this. Anecdotes and hearsay can be interesting (and sometimes they can act as leads for further research) but without credible references they are just that and can not be used as data for research.

[stoen]

2 hours ago, joss said:

I think that it would be good to include references when bold statements are made.

@joss @mana: Thanks for pointing at information preferedly having research data validity.

 

I had an ancestor who was teaching at a technical high school in Vienna at a time it was ocupied by Germany, who I’ve been told having earned an equivalent of this. 

 

Grandfather of my father’s friend was teaching at a college in Berlin, I’ve also been told he was earning such a salary. This was first-hand information.

 

Unfortunately I can’t back it with a written reference, or some kind of statistical analysis.

Those people are not living anymore and I posess none of their bookkeepings. 

 

By reading through this very interesting link I can only conclude these people must have earned substantially above the average. I have no clue what percentage of the intellectual working class did they belong to incomewise.

Therefore I understand this information I gave can’t be taken as statistically credible and eligible for further research.

Please, accept my appologies if my “bold statement” comment didn’t meet the presumed standards of relevance.

Thanks.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Stoen,

I really think it was lack of money that fueled the tiny car market., not war wounds.....

German workers were paid so little, that they had to get a two week bonus for Vacation, or they would have none. They had to get a month's bonus for Christmas, or they would have had none. (In good companies that tradition has remained.)

 

The Isetta was an Italian car; surely the Fiat of it's day. Licensed all over Europe. So I don't think it had that much to do with war wounds, though that is a point.

 

 

What is really adorable, is early pictures of the then new autobahns, late '30's or fifties, with one or two cars on it, only.

 

 

 

[mana]

3 hours ago, stoen said:

@joss @mana: Thanks for pointing at information preferedly having research data validity.

 

I had an ancestor who was teaching at a technical high school in Vienna at a time it was ocupied by Germany, who I’ve been told having earned an equivalent of this. 

 

Grandfather of my father’s friend was teaching at a college in Berlin, I’ve also been told he was earning such a salary. This was first-hand information.

 

Unfortunately I can’t back it with a written reference, or some kind of statistical analysis.

Those people are not living anymore and I posess none of their bookkeepings. 

 

By reading through this very interesting link I can only conclude these people must have earned substantially above the average. I have no clue what percentage of the intellectual working class did they belong to incomewise.

Therefore I understand this information I gave can’t be taken as statistically credible and eligible for further research.

Please, accept my appologies if my “bold statement” comment didn’t meet the presumed standards of relevance.

Thanks.

Hi @Stoen, no worries. I think this might stem from the fact that teachers are not (and have never been) an uniform group income wise. A college or university teacher or a professor most likely earned quite a bit more than a regular school teacher etc. So for you "a teacher" seems to have meant someone in the upper income bracket and for us, it did not. All good.

[tacitus]

Hello all,

Thank you for the information. I read them with interest.

 

Trying to know who used Pelikan pens in prewar time, I came across this site.

Though it was not Pelikan, I wonder how much Soennecken 1310 Medicus cost.

Anyway, seeing the price of Soennecken  Präsident, I thought Pelikan pens were generally more affordable.

 

[joss]

1 hour ago, tacitus said:

Anyway, seeing the price of Soennecken  Präsident, I thought Pelikan pens were generally more affordable.

 

Can you elaborate on how you come to the thought that "Pelikan pens were generally more affordable" compared to Soennecken? A 1937 Soennecken pamphlet shows that the price of a Soennecken piston filler varied between RM 6.75 and RM 31.50. That is pretty much the same as the price of Pelikan pens of that period.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I was always under the impression that Pelikan was behind Soennecken and MB. Got no facts for that impression...

 

I don't have this Osmia pen...just stolen pictures. A decade ago, one went for a buy now, E 350 on German Ebay, which was massively over my then max E -50-70 border.

 

Osmia Supra Luscus; was the one they chased the two Big Boys with...Soeneecken and MB, in the mid '30's. A button pen.

And as one can see by the nib, a pure signature pen.

 

Lambrou's book don't show what might well have come to light after 1989. It does show a lot of gold overlay.

This one wasn't shown.

 

 

 

[stoen]

As far as I’ve learned here, Kaweco might have also been responsible for part of the Pelikan 100 outsourced nibs production between 1930 and 1934. Does anyone know how well did Kaweco fare in the thirties as compared to Pelikan in Germany and internationally?

 

[joss]

1 hour ago, stoen said:

As far as I’ve learned here, Kaweco might have also been responsible for part of the Pelikan 100 outsourced nibs production between 1930 and 1934. Does anyone know how well did Kaweco fare in the thirties as compared to Pelikan in Germany and internationally?

 

Kaweco was not really a thriving company in the early 1930s. Thomas Neureither, known as Kaweco on this forum and the founder of the Kaweco pen museum in Heidelberg (Germany), wrote a very interesting brief history of Kaweco:

 

www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/14104-kaweco-history-part-1/

www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/14106-kaweco-history-part-2/

 

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Message Thomas....Kaweco* on the Com; he is a scholar on German pens made anywhere near Heidelberg. Even twisted City Halls arm to put in a small Heidelberg area made Pen Museum in an Art Nouveau fire station, opposite of the Handschueheim castle ruin. 

It is not just a Kaweco museum, in Heidelberg was once the Pen Capitol of the World...........with 8-9 pen companies.

Mercedes (nothing to do with cars; worked for MB first) , Original Reform, Osmia, Kaweco, Faber-Castell, Herlitz, Mutschler, Boehler & Lamy.

I do have pens from each of those companies. I did sell my mdl 27 Lamy...only having my Joy and 1990 Persona.

I don't remember what this pile of pens in Thomas's museum is; but think it was a pen brand I didn't know...so many very pretty ones in this pile. 

 

Mandel rolled pens were common.

 

 

Three nib factories in Heidelberg. Osmia founded in 1922, bought up for debt by Degussa in 1932. They continued making nibs for Osmia and also under their own brand mark.  Rupp 1922-@ 1970, Bock @ 1938-now.

 

And a company does not have to be 'doing well' to make money, making a nib for another company. Every little phenning counts.

I have also Herlitz nibs, along with some Degussa. In the Herlitz nibs are stiffer than the Degussa, I'd guess Herlitz made nibs for themselves and their higher level Luxor sub-brand also.

 

*Thoma's  uncle worked at Kaweco a long time ago.........which moved around after some bankruptcies....had ended up in Greece, and now back in Germany.