Heidelberg Pen Museum
A New Museum
The photographs that illustrated this article were not preserved when the original site went offline.
Thomas Neureither gives a report on the opening of the new Pen Museum in Heidelberg, where his superb collection of pens and pen memorabilia has found a permanent home. His report is in the form of a letter to Len Provisor.
Posted by Len Provisor: Thomas Neureither, reporting from Heidelberg, Germany
After more than 25 years of collecting fountain pens, their local history and their making of I had enough. My apartment and my mother’s basement and other storage were full of fountain pens ephemera and machines. Since several years I had been asking at the city of Heidelberg for rooms to build up an exhibition about the history of the fountain pen industries of Heidelberg and the surrounding communities. I failed several times.
Heidelberg never had been a typical industrial location. There was the Old City and the castle which represented the center of the German Romanticism. There was the Heidelberg University with its culture, natural science, medicine, philosophy and so on. The industrial importance had been from lesser interest in my hometown but, touching upon the history of fountain pen making, I could change the knowledge of the people here.
Within some years two small rooms could be found, a garage in the old city hall of Handschuhsheim where the old fire engine and equipment for the fire fighters had been located. Years of renovating followed.
The City of Heidelberg spent a lot of money because the historic building fabric could not been altered. An under floor heating had been installed to dry out the big humid sandstone floor blocks. New windows, doors, electricity and heating had been made. Many private sponsors spent money for some furniture. I did not have much time for moving in until the opening day in November 2016. I installed a part of my machines, alas there was not enough place for all.
The inauguration was very exciting! The Heidelberg Lord Mayor and the First Mayor made the official opening with their speeches and gave me the feeling that I actually had transformed the hobby of writing to a public presentation of a part of industrial history of my hometown. Many people from authorities and societies attended, also the special guest and big sponsor Wolfgang Bock from Bock nibs.
During the next days many newspapers and online blogs in South-West Germany presented articles from the opening day of the museum: photos of the opening on Facebook (when the Facebook account window appears in German, press “Jetzt nicht”: that means “I don’t want to have an account yet”) and the City of Heidelberg’s report.
Then I opened the doors three additional days for the public.
Among the visitors who came a lot of elder people attended who had been working at the one of the many fountain pen producing factories and workshops which had been located in Heidelberg. It was really interesting for me and for the other visitors to listen to their memories about fountain pen making in the old times.
I frequently switched on the turnery machine and treated one of the rods that people could imagine the deafening noise and the not so good smell of hard rubber when they think about 15 or more of these machines working simultaneously in a small room. Somebody who had been thinking about the good old times possibly changed his view. One of my top machines is the chasing machine. My nephew Max had inserted a hand crank so people can follow very slowly after the fine movements of the chisels from this masterpiece of engineering. I hope I will find the time to make detailed pics of all machines for fountain pen and nib making to explain the origin and the function.
And, last not least, fountain pens. Alas the rooms are not large enough to show all exhibits from Heidelberg and surround. So I selected some representatives from Kaweco, Osmia, Böhler, Luxor, Reform, Mercedes, and some smaller trademarks. I presented the different materials and filling methods from the old times. I showed in a short cut the traditional nib making and how chasings, imprints and engravings had been made. Each of these chapters will be presented with more intense in a frequently changing special exhibition during the next years.
A few days later a team from the South West Television Channel came to make a 4 minutes clip for the evening news. They had been concerned not to get enough material about only pens… but in the end they were overwhelmed. They came at 11am and after a few light tests they immediately began. They made a little sequence: go to the treasure cabin… take the case, open and take out a fountain pen… write anything… I took a sheet of my grandfather’s original accounting papers and wrote: “Hi Len! Jump across the big pond and visit the Heidelberg fountain pen museum. Ever yours, your friend Thomas.” I had no chance to think something different!
At 1 o’clock pm a guy from a radio channel bumped in and made an additional interview. At 3 pm, 12 pupils came in and we made a little program about the history of quills, steel dip nibs and fountain pens from different eras (mostly in situ). It took a little bit of time before the young boys and girls recognized the fun of writing, which possibly is different compared to learn the lessons, but they got it! In the end the desks looked like a battlefield of papers, inks and writing equipment. Each few minutes I could hear “I need more paper,” and a young boy, staring at the mechanical function of an old safety pen, said “Hey cool, old man!”, which is possibly the highest grade of honor in the youth language. It ended at 5 pm; we all had been very tired but very lucky. It surely would be difficult for the film team to cut out a 4 min clip from the possibly 2.5 hours of totally interesting film material.
One very small aspect had been from interest for the film team and for some of the newspaper editors: I had made a little cabin for remembrance of Anne Frank’s fountain pen. Millions of people in this world know from her diary and there are photos which show her writing. Frequently the fountain pen people discuss which origin her fountain pen could have been, but this is still unknown. I tried it with experimental archeology. Anne Frank wrote about her beloved fountain pen and how she lost it. It had been a gift from her grandmother in Aachen. The writing equipment shop with its best tradition and reputation there had been Adolf Schweizer. They had Osmia fountain pens and Osmia had been the most wanted export pen in the Netherlands, where Anne and her family had been living. I surely would give my grandchildren the best writing articles I could get, and I think until today it would be a historic Osmia.
Look here: the South West Television (SWR) clip.
Later more.
Kind regards,
Your friend Thomas
Thomas Neureither is the authority on German fountain pens, in particular the history of many manufacturers and fountain pen brands made in the Heidelberg area. His family was employed in the fountain pen industry as far back as the turn of the century. Today his museum quality collection contains the vintage tools, machinery, fountain pen samples, literature and documents from the golden era of pen manufacture in Heidelberg and Germany.
© 2017 Thomas Neureither