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About the history of the Berger family and the duchy of Pless: According to Kellner & Pape's "Bülex", a directory of the German guntrade, the first gunmaking Berger was Friedrich Wilhelm Berger. F.W. was the son of a Andreas Berger, forester to the princes in Pless. Up to 1847 the Duchy Pless belonged to a branch of the House of Anhalt – Köthen, one of the many small German principalities.(BTW, my own great-grandfather was a forester to Heinrich XI Fürst Pless too, 1880 to 1913) Andreas' son, gunmaker to the Köthen court, opened the family shop in 1827 and obtained full Köthen citizenship in 1830. He passed away about 1860.
F.W.'s son was Rudolph Berger, died 1894. During his travelling years, then necessary for bcoming "master", Rudolph worked for some time at the Paris shop of Gastinne –Renette, where he became acquainted with Renette's slide and drop, outside primed breechloading action. Albert Henry Marie Renette, obtained two French patents for outside primed guns with slide and drop action in 1820, way before Lefaucheux' invention of the break-open gun, 1834. Such capping breechloaders were called "Schnelladegewehre" = quick loading guns in Germany.In 1853 Renette's son in law and partner Louis Julien Gastinne obtained the French patent No.9058, showing this breech action on a hammer gun, intended to use inside-primed centerfire cartridges. Subsequently the patent agent Auguste Edouard Loradoux Bellford patented the same thing in Great Britain, patent No.2778 of 1853. Bellford assigned this British patent to Charles Lancaster, London. Lancaster popularized these hammer slide and drop action using the base-fire cartridge. Nowadays Renette's basic slide and drop action is most often ascribed to Teschner / Collath, as the Collaths of the Teschner company used this breech action on their guns up to the 1930s.
By 1859 Rudolph Berger was back in Köthen and took over his father's shop at Wallstrasse 19. Apparently he obtained an Anhaltian "patent" for his own needlefire guns. On his own design Rudolph Berger combined Renette's slide and drop action with his own coil spring / striker locks. Later he added Chassepot's rubber obturation seals to the breech design of his needlefires. when needlefires went out of fashion in the early 1870s, he redesigned his guns again to use "modern" centerfire cartridges of the Schneider – Daw type.
IMHO Rudolph Berger had most of "his" guns made by the Suhl guntrade. Other gunmakers combined Berger's coil spring inline locks with more conventional break-open breech actions like the lefaucheux and Roux. I will try to unearth some photos of such guns. All such centerfire breechloaders with Berger's inline locks were called "Fürst – Pless - Gewehre" then. Corneli in 1884 dismissed the Fürst – Pless – Gewehre as "outmoded and impractical".
Not much is known about "A. Berger, Magdeburg" except his address Bahnhofstr. 25 -27. He is mentioned 1884 as "Berger – Waffen". As first names in Germany often reappear over several generations, I suppose "A." was another Andreas Berger, most likely a son of Rudolph. His guns were probably also sourced from the Suhl guntrade.
The Köthen and Magdeburg Bergers are not to be confused with the Bergers from Witten on Ruhr, founders of the Witten steelworks. In the 1870s those Bergers had nearly a world monopoly on small arms barrel steel, with customers worldwide, among them Colt in Hartford. It may be a shock to some, but the barrel and cylinder of your "All American" Colt Peacemaker are of imported German, Berger in Witten, steel.

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