A different sort of Soennecken

If I could start all over, and think collection rather than an assortment of fountain pens, I'd probably keep it simple and German.

Each day, my Pelikans and Pelikanos (when in use) start without fuss or bother. All are ready to write on first scratch even after days of idleness and all flush rather easily. They are so easy to hold, write with, and on a tactile level alone, they feel good to the touch.

My Lamys also start easily and prove nearly flawless in their ease of use. I have the usual assortment, Safari, Vista, Ratio and a CP1.

So if I sold or gave away nearly ever other pen, and was 30 years younger, I'd try to snatch a few Geha, Osmia, Soennecken, early school Pelikans like the 100 and keep to under twenty (20) pens total.

At present and according to my Fountain Pen Inventory, I have about fifty-five pens, use fewer than 10 and only get excited when I use the Lamys, Pelikans, my Sheaffer Vac, Waterman Twist and strangely my Sensa Meridian and Libelle Autumn. Again it may be tactile, nib width or some other idiosyncratic issue but I have no desire for Japanese pens. I do occasionally covet a vintage pen or three made in the USA or Great Britain.

I suppose it was a good catch to get the new Parker Duofold Centennial, but frankly, I don't find it to be the best writer and it does not start easily in the morning although I've tried to keep it in regular rotation.

But, I am not thirty years younger, it is not possible to sell all these other pens, or at least not easily, and I will have to be content with my past decisions.

Pennant Magazine

I'm looking for this issue of Pennant, Summer '03 because it claims to have an article on the German Soennecken pen which I am interested in learning more about.

It is one of the handful of possible fountain pens Anne Frank's grandmother may have gifted her in the late '30s.

Another pre-WWII German fountain pen

This pen could be a Pelikan but it isn't. See the flat top and lower barrel design.

But is is a German pen from around the 30s and one that might have been tempting to a Nana.

It is a Soennecken.

(Sold for $79.00)

Aachen and the 1930s

As I polish and clean and think of travelling again, I come full circle back to Anne Frank's fountain pen. Her grandmother lived in Aachen in the 30s and it was her grandmother who gifted Anne her pen.

Aachen is the most western city in Germany and near both the Belgian and Netherlands borders. I believe one must fly into Maastricht to get to Aachen.

While pondering, I had a memory of sitting on a terrace in Zurich with my own adopted grandmother, the matriarch of a large Jewish Dutch family, and only one of two family members to survive the war. Fortuitously, and with some clever guile, she and one of her two sons escaped Holland before it was over-run by the Nazis. Her other son, the older of the two, stayed to fight in the resistance and perished.

I can see her lovely, soft face, thick grey hair pulled back in a chignon and twinkling grey eyes smiling over our tea, but concentrated and recounting the past that separated her from the Netherlands, her lost son and brought her to a June day more than twenty years later.

If I focus, perhaps I'll be able to capture something magical from those wonderful days and evenings we shared together and also touch the store-house of her knowledge and intuit what she would have given me or Miriam had she thought to give either of us a fountain pen.

Not rich but affluent, price would not have been an issue, but surely practicality. Colour and comfort would dictate to a large extent what she might have chosen, and most of all she would have selected a fountain pen that she hoped Miriam and I would cherish.

Each time I see a fountain pen offered on the 'bay from this period in history I bid $18.00 and wonder if somehow handling a Soennecken, Geha or Pelikan circa 1930s will reveal to me the secret.