Swiss Army Knives Were Once Made In Germany
By July 12, 2022
A favorite tool of survivalists, hunters, and Boy Scouts, the Swiss Army knife is the item you want if you're lost in the wilderness or stranded on a desert island, but what makes the Swiss such experts in knives? It turns out these knives were originally manufactured in Germany. It took one patriotic innovator to turn this classic pocket knife into a national symbol of Switzerland.
The Swiss Army Knife
The Swiss government had always included a pocket knife with the equipment it issued to its newly enlisted soldiers, which they started using in the late 1880s to open the canned food they were provided. It worked, but it damaged the blade and often cut the user's skin. The Swiss government decided to revamp their knives to include can-opening attachments as well as other tools for soldiers to maintain their rifles and a folding feature, but there were no manufacturing facilities in Switzerland equipped to make such a knife.
Karl Elsener
In January 1891, the Swiss military placed an order for 15,000 pocket knives with Wester & Co., a knife manufacturer based in Solingen, Germany. In general, the Swiss Army was satisfied with the German-made knives, but patriotic Swiss nationals, who prided themselves on their manufacturing industry, didn't like asking Germany for help. They turned to Karl Elsener, a Swiss manufacturer of surgical equipment who retooled his factory to produce pocket knives for the Swiss Army, but Elsener was expensive, so on the verge of bankruptcy and losing out to a competing bid from a German factory, he decided that if he couldn't make a more cost-effective knife, he would make a better one.
