The history of modern small arms is in part so fascinating because of how many firearms have been developed even in obscure circumstances, and how many of those obscure small arms still exist in museums and private collections around the world. Even though I make learning about obscure modern small arms my hobby, I am continually surprised by the new and unique weapons I uncover both on the Internet and in real-life excursions to some of the aforementioned collections.

TFB reader Bronezhilet recently visited the Bundeswehr’s (German Army) Defense Technology Museum in Koblenz, Germany, and shared with TFB the photos he took of the small arms in the collection there. Over the course of a few installments, we’ll be taking a look at groups of these photos. For the moment, we won’t be taking an in-depth look, but I encourage our readers to check out these weapons for themselves!

We previously looked at some of the great selfloading rifles, submachine guns, and assault rifles at the Koblenz museum, and today we’re going to round things out by checking out their pistol prototypes. Let’s start with the mechanically unique double-action Dimancea revolver:

Do you like pepperbox revolvers?

A lovely ring-actuated repeating pistol from Schulhof:

Another Schulhof, this one looks like a testbed:

An earlier Schulhof prototype, from 1885:

TFB’s favorite Austrian striker-fired pistol, the M1907 Roth-Steyr!

How about a Union pistol with a horseshoe mag?

Not unusual enough for you? Try a Danuvia VD-01 with its helical magazine on for size:

Koblenz definitely loves their cutaways, here of a Hungarian M1937:

The granddaddy of the machine pistol – the Steyr M1912/16, with its extended 16 round magazine:

And finally, an East German SED machine pistol, with its distinctive forward grip/magazine housing:

That’s all we have for the pistols at Koblenz, but there’s one more section to get through. Tune in next time when we check out the random weird and wonder weapons that the Bundeswehr’s museum has on display!