page_title: Erma Werke
section_title: Firearms Production
hierarchical_section_title: Erma Werke / Firearms Production
caption_attribution_description: English: The Erma en:EMP 44 sub-machine gun
context_page_description: The Erfurter Maschinenfabrik was a German weapons manufacturer founded in 1922 by Berthold Geipel. Prior to and during World War II it manufactured many firearms, including the Karabiner 98k, the MP40 and other submachine guns.
  The company is also noted for having produced various forms of military training rifles, including the famous EL 24 subcaliber "Barrel Insert" training devices that allowed .22 long rifle ammunition to be fired from infantry rifles such as the Karabiner 98 and Steyr-Mannlicher M1895 through use of a special action conversion kit and a thin-walled .22 caliber barrel inserted within the larger rifle's bore.
context_section_description: Die 'EMP' series was based on designs by Heinrich Vollmer which had been bought by Geipert in the early 1930s. These SMGs would be produced in different variants from 1932 (as direct copies of the Vollmer models) to 1938 and sold in Germany, but also to Spain, Mexico, China and Yugoslavia. The Spanish acquired a license for domestic production later on. By 1935 a license to produce repeating rifles of the Mauser Model 98 system has been acquired, production would go on until the early 1940s mid-war. Pre-war conversion kits as training devices, with subcaliber 'Insert Barrels' like the type 'Erma EL 24' (EL for 'Einstecklauf'), would also be sold for those weapons systems. In 1933 Berthold's brother Elmar Geipel is hired by the company. In 1934 the enterprise was renamed to Erfurter Maschinenfabrik B. Geipel GmbH, or 'ERMA' for short. In 1937 Berthold Geipel is appointed Wehrwirtschaftsführer of Erfurt by the Nazi regime.
  From the version 'EMP 36' of ERMA the SMG 'MP 38' and the following model 'MP 40' had been developed under the guidance of Vollmer, and been accepted by the german Wehrmacht, been put into production. In 1943 another SMG had been constructed by the 'ERMA-Werke', the 'Erma EMP 44', a very simplified Machine Pistol, which could have been manufactured with speed and in great numbers. Such a crudely designed firearm was not approved by the Wehrmacht at that time. Later reconsiderations on the viability for a setup to manufacture the firearm led to nowhere, although there had been certain demand by the end of the war. Similar designs for such simple SMGs had been met with success and these were issued in numbers to the Soviet army (PPS submachine gun) and the British (Sten gun), to be used effectively for decades.
  During the war part of the Geipel enterprise was located at the Altonaer Straße 25 in Erfurt, an area on the campus of the Fachhochschule Erfurt, founded in 1991. Furthermore, since about 1940 a forced labour camp ('Zwangsarbeitslager') for the nearby weaponry manufacture plants had been erected in the vicinity of said Fachhochschule. Around 2000 workers had been re-settled there in shacks to keep production going.
caption: ERMA MP 44, prototype SMG
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