9mm FROMMER

Research notes

Rudolf Frommer was born on the 4th of August 1868 in Budapest and did not enter the arms trade at first, but rather he studied economics and became an investment banker at the Hitel Bank in Budapest. On of the accounts he was responsible for was the firm of Fegyver és Gépgyár, the Hungarian arms manufacturer, who at that stage were experiencing some financial difficulties. Using his financial management talents, they turned the company around and not long afterwards they were the second biggest supplier of the M95 Mannlicher rifle to the Austro-Hungarian Army and not long after that, the second biggest arms manufacturer, after Waffen Fabrik Steyr. Frommer was also inspired by the designs of Georg Roth and Karel Krnka, whose designs were manufactured in the Budapest factory, and soon he started working on his own designs. His success at management led to his appointment as General Manager of the plant in 1914. His design, the Frommer Stop was the first self-loading pistol that was entirely designed and mass-produced in Hungary. His design was unique in the sense that the recoil spring with its guide rod was situated above the barrel, giving his pistol its unique appearance. This design enabled the gun to handle much higher pressures than a normal pistol and was made in two calibers, namely a 32 Frommer, basically the same as a higher pressure 32 ACP and the 9mm Frommer, which is the same as for the 380 ACP. (Erlmeier, Brandt Ref. 122).