I got a warm and
fuzzy feeling from Peter Baker’s comment two weeks ago - in connection with
Rowan Henderson’s growing collection - in which Peter said that many of my
typewriter encounters have turned out to have good “back stories”. That certainly seems to have
been the case of late, especially in relation to typewriters that have been
owned by, or are still being used by, exceedingly interesting ladies.
I was also delighted
with the comments from Peter (Manual Entry), as well as Anna Strad (A.R.M.S., A Machine for the End of the World) and Ken Coghlan (Swinging Typebars),
regarding my new old friend Eva. I met up with Eva again for lunch on Friday
and handed back her fully serviced Baby Empire, with which she is thrilled.
Yes, Ken, the ribbon spools on it are now the right size, so Eva can now type away on it with the “gull wings” closed.
Here’s another
intriguing “back story” regarding an old lady’s typewriter, which I now own.
On the Monday before
my typewriter exhibition opened at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, curator
Rowan Henderson and her team were laying out typewriters ready to place them in
their display cabinets.
There was a tap on
the glass doors and one of the staff members went to talk to the elderly lady
who was peering in at the array of machines.
Christel, who is 84,
wanted to get in contact with me because she had an old Olympia portable
typewriter she wanted to add to my collection.
The first thing that
struck me about her typewriter was the unusual way in which the case locked –
the clasp folds from the front edge underneath the base of the case.
The second thing was
the green colour of the portable. I own an early model Olympic Simplex, from
the 1930s, but this, like other variations on the Olympia Model 4 I have seen
(mostly from the late Tilman Elster’s collection, and featuring on the European
Typewriter Project website put together by Will Davis) are a shiny black.
These three typewriters are from the late Tilman Elster's collection
and feature on Will Davis's European Typewriter Project
This machine is from Wim Van Rompuy's Collection
Upon taking
Christel’s machine apart to clean out the lint-laden workings (I’ve never seen
such a dense accumulation!) I noted that the green paintwork appeared to be the
machine’s original colour. Everywhere, that is, except for the two side edges
of the back plate; these “lips” slide in behind the mask’s main frame. These are
a shiny black. Suspicious? Not necessarily.
Christel told me the
story of her typewriter. She had bought it second-hand in the Russian zone of
Berlin in 1951.
Her father, the
botanical scientist Professor Karl Otto Müller, who had got out of Germany before
World War II and taken up a position at Cambridge University in England, had
organised for Christel to escape East Berlin while she still could.
Professor Müller had
received an offer to work with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra and was preparing
to move to Australia. He had demanded that his daughter be allowed to travel
with him, as a £10 migrant, when he set out to start a new life Down Under.
As Christel made preparations to join her father in
Cambridge, she and a female friend went shopping for the things they believed
Christel would find essential in the West. The friend had advised Christel that
if she had a typewriter, she would be guaranteed of finding work in England and
Australia.
Thus they found the Olympia and paid a relatively small
amount of money for it, and Christel took it with her to Cambridge and then brought
it on to Canberra.
Here in Australia, Christel and her husband found much
work for the Olympia, but for many years it had been stored away in a cupboard.
That is, until Christel took it out to show me.
Given this machine’s unusual history, I am guessing it was
possibly refurbished by Olympia during the company’s immediate post-war years,
while its factory was still in Erfurt. The Soviets took over this factory at
the end of the war, while Olympia was re-established in West Germany. After
action in the International Court of Appeal in The Hague, typewriters coming
out of Erfurt had to be relabelled Optimas, starting in 1951, the year Christel
bought her Olympia.
The paintwork on the green Olympia suggests to me that
this is a factory re-paint job – other than that, it must be its original
colour. Perhaps some spare parts from earlier models were used and repainted
(the back plate is green on both sides). This is certainly no amateur
repainting, it has all the hallmarks of factory work.
After leaving Cambridge, K.O. Müller joined the Microbiology Section of the Division of Plant Industry at the CSIRO here in Canberra in 1953.
A graduate of Berlin, he worked on the mechanisms involved
in disease resistance in plants and studied responses of the seed cavity of French
bean pods to spores of the peach pathogen, Monilinia fructicola.
You're right - that's pretty interesting!
ReplyDeleteThat is a very interesting story. Trying to guess the back story behind a machine is fun. Having the full, rich history is just great!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that could be what Optima green looks like over black instead of a light primer or aluminum? Here is mine for reference: http://vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com/2011/09/say-hello-to-svetlana-optima.html
Thanks Peter and Dwayne. The idea of slipping away as the Iron Curtain descends, with a typewriter under one's arm, appeals to me. But I can't explain why buying a typewriter before leaving the Russian zone was so important. Christal still has a very strong German accent after all these years, but it seemed to make sense to her to buy one.
ReplyDeleteYes, Dwayne, on the inside of the frame, where the green paint gets a bit thinner or has worn in parts, there appears to be a thin black undercoat between the green and the metal. So I think that's a distinct possibility.
That's a lovely looking Optima, by the way.
What an amazing story! That could be the plot for a short story or even a novel worth of the next NaNoWriMo!
ReplyDeleteSvetlana sends her grudging thanks for your compliment. Be sure to look up her new ribbon day and Svetlana's Rule for Survival. That is one paranoid Cold Warrior.
ReplyDeleteIndeed a good "back story."
ReplyDeleteIt's an attractive color and your theory of a factory repaint sounds right.
What a story! You meet the most interesting people in all of typewriterdom, Robert! Original color or not pn that typer, I love it, as green is my favorite. I'm also quite fond of those huge 'U' keys.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for the kind mention!
-Anna
Unbelievable to find here an article about a typewriter that once belonged to my australian relatives. And so I learn something more about the history of my family by this coincidence. Thanks for your blog. Dirk W. from Germany.
ReplyDelete