While the Mannlicher-Schoenauer failed as a military rifle for economic reasons (it cost nearly twice as much as contemporary Mausers), it found success in the sporting world. Only 300,000 of the military rifles would be manufactured over the following three decades as Greece was the only army to accept the design. The rifle was originally designed as a military arm, tested and rejected by Portugal, but accepted by Greece in 1903. Patented in 1900, it differed from previous Mannlichers in its magazine, doing away with the en bloc clip and replacing it with a rotary design by Steyr employee Otto Schönauer (a name often Anglicized as “Schoenauer”). The rifle was adopted by the armies of Romania in 1892 and the Netherlands in 1895.Ī decade after Mannlicher’s first turnbolts appeared, the rifle that would be known as the Mannlicher-Schoenauer came on the scene. While Mauser’s designs went to a solid rear receiver bridge with the bolt handle located behind it and a box magazine, Mannlicher stuck to the split-rear-bridge receiver and en bloc clip. The immediate evolution of the Commission rifle was Mannlicher’s Model 1891. While the handle on early turnbolt military rifles was often a round knob that protruded out at a 90 degree angle, the bolt on the ’88 carbine featured a turned down and flattened, or “spatulated,” handle that made the carbine more compact for carry in a scabbard. The style was common on compact European military carbines and was designed to protect their lightweight barrels. Carbines produced for cavalry units that featured “stutzen” stocks that terminated in a metal cap at the muzzle. The aesthetics of the 1888 also contributed to later Mannlicher-Schoenauers. While the action resembled the 1871 Mauser, the rifle used Ferdinand von Mannlicher’s en bloc clip for cartridge feeding. The Gewehr 1888 “Commission” rifle drew its inspiration from both Mauser and Mannlicher innovations. In the 1880s a commission of Prussian officers designed what European firearms expert Ludwig Olson said “sired” the later Mannlicher turnbolt rifles. Paul Mauser’s 1871 bolt design used a separate head with a wing safety mounted at the rear, features that found their way onto the later Mannlichers. The needle gun, and its successor the Mauser Model 1871, used a split-bridge receiver through which the breech bolt handle passed when the action was worked. By the time Hemingway got his hands on a Mannlicher-Schoenauer in 1930, the rifle’s basic design was nearly half-a-century old, its roots going back to one of the first turnbolt rifle designs, the Dreyse Needle Gun.
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