The Haenel company was founded in 1840 and was mainly busy with bycicle- and small-machines production, but also with the production of small arms for the army. Haenel as one of the three biggest companies in that area together with the others, J.P. Sauer und V.Ch. Schilling, took over a great part of the production for the new German Rifle with Mauser-system for the German army.
In 1987 the small arms designer C.W. Aydt joined the company in order to produce his Aydt-Target-Pistols in a dedicated new founded
dartment of the company.
When the German Army adopted the Reichsrevolver M1879 and M1883, the company Haenel for some time fusioned with the sporting guns company V.Ch. Schilling , in order to participate like other companies in an order on demand -production for this handguns ("VCS CGH Suhl").
When the great gun designer Louis Schmeisser moved from the company Bergmann in Gaggenau to Haenel in Suhl, they also were busy with the construction of some vestpocket-pistols as well as later on, under big influence of Schmeisser, the more and more with the development of machine-guns and military devices, where the pistol-production ended around 1932.
Up to the begin of World War II Haenel still produced airguns and rifles and during the war they were responsible for the main part of the production of the machinegun 38 and 40. The production-code at this time was "fxo".
After the war most of the machines of the Haenel-company were dismounted by the Russians. The rest was run by the DDR-authorities as VEB Ernst Thälmann Werk, producing Sporting-guns.
Schmeisser disappeared in 1945 in Russian prision and nobody ever heared of him again.