The Rieger Bolt Action Pistol

(Image source)

The early days of self-loading pistols give us some marvelous failed designs, as inventors tried different approaches to see what might solve the problem.  This typically took the form of seeing what worked in other types of firearms and adapting it to pistols.

In the 1880s, bolt-action mechanisms were the rage in rifles.  Perhaps, seemingly thought Erwin Rieger, this might work in a pistol, too?

The question was how to propel the bolt backwards and forwards.  If that could be accomplished, the details of extracting the spent case, ejecting it, and stripping a new cartridge for loading were well understood.  Since pistols were assumed to be one-handed weapons, a side mounted bolt actuator would not do.

Herr Rieger solved this problem by a lever actuated by a ring in front of the trigger.  Pushing the ring forward opened the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge.  Pulling the ring back closed the bolt, chambering a new round.  It might be more accurate to call this a lever action pistol, but the very limited information I've been able to find (nothing on the Internet (!); a short reference in Ian Hogg's The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Firearms) describes it as a bolt action, inspired by military rifles.

It was perhaps inspired by the Passler & Siedel model of 1887, but the inspiration very well may have gone the other direction.  The Passler & Siedel looks more advanced, with a removable magazine.  It's a bit of a stretch to think that Rieger would have dropped a feature like this.

(Image source)

Alas for this marvelous design, it seems to have only worked well when the pistol was clean and oiled.  When dirty or dry, the lever took great physical strength in the finger to cycle the action.  Newer designs that used the energy of the fired round to work the action swept the field.

But there is a pleasure in the hunt for the fossilized remains from the Pleistocene Age of self-loading pistols.