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The E.Schmidt & Habermann, Suhl factory is a forgotten greatness of the German guntrade. They were predominantly producing for the trade as a “gunmaker’s gunmaker”. As Schmidt & Habermann did most of their work for the trade, you rarely find a gun openly marked by them, but if you inspect the guns of the countless country and city gunmakers, even "name" ones, closely, you may often find their "ESHA" mark hidden inside. F.i. all the famous pre-war "Original Wilhelm Brenecke, Leipzig" rifles were made for them by Schmidt & Habermann and have S&H serial numbers, as were guns and rifles signed by Barella, Burgsmüller, Peterlongo, AKAH and many others. They are most often signed with a hidden ESHA mark.
The venerable company E. Schmidt & Habermann, Suhl was founded in 1860. During the 1920s it was owned by the brothers Franz and Paul Stadelmann. About 1930 Schmidt & Habermann offered the usual complete program of hunting guns from cheap hammer shotguns to sidelocks, drillings and combination guns of all descriptions and over-unders. In 1881 they patented a takedown system that was later used by Westley Richards. S&H created the “clamshell” action for double rifles too. One of the S&H trademarks was "Waldlaeufer" = woodsloafer which term now generally describes a special type of drilling, essentially a side-by-side shotgun with a small bore, .22lr or .22 Winchester centerfire aka 5.6x36R Vierling barrel inside the top rib, used then for off-season, year round fox and rabbit hunting, the small rifle barrel intended to give a little more reach just in case..
During WWI, all the Thuringian gunmakers were occupied with making stuff for the German army, either complete arms such as pistols or at least some parts like those for the Star-marked M98 rifles. When the war ended in 1918, Suhl was full of M98 parts but without work anymore. Hard times befell all the German gunmakers then: No more military orders, the restrictions of the Versailles treaty, international trade restrictions and economy coming to a downslide, resulting in an inflation that got to its peak in 1923, when a loaf of bread cost several billion Mark. Very few people could afford new sporting guns. Gunmakers tried to survive by converting ex-military M98 actions into affordable hunting rifles. Schmidt & Habermann offered these too, as did all others. Everyone tried to invent a product that would allow him to survive in some market niche. Immediately after WWI Mauser was out of the commercial repeating rifle market, so the Stadelmanns decided to offer an "improved" Mauser-type hunting rifle. Due to the loss of Germany's African colonies, little need was seen for a new magnum length action. With all those reuseable M98 actions floating around, it made little sense to compete with them. The main rifle quarry of German hunters then was the small roebuck. Many hunters then felt the standard-length Mauser cartridges like 8x57, a prohibited cartridge anyhow, or its "Ersatz", the 8x60, much too destructive for those tiny deer, so S&H decided to offer an "Improved version of the short Mauser K action, chambered for the then-popular short roe-class cartridges 6.5x54 Mauser, 8x51 and a proprietary 7x54. Later they added the .250-3000 and the 5.6x52R aka .22 Savage High Power to their offering.
S&H designed a simplified, small ring, round-bottomed K-length receiver without a thumb-hole cut, but with sort of a "square bridge" on the receiver ring to provide extra steel to cut the usual claw-mount dovetail into. The bolt assembly was also simplified, falling back on some pre-98 design features. The guide-rib on the bolt body is omitted, as is a third or safety locking lug. The firing pin lacks the post-1902 front safety lugs too.
The unique bolt sleeve and safety arrangement is completely different from the Mauser design. Instead of a flag safety to block the firing pin there is an arrangement that allows the rifle to be manually uncocked to set it on "safe".
On their M21 S&H employed a big "Cocking Knob" on the firing pin nut, similar to those on the American Krags and Springfields, but rather unusual on German full-bore rifles. A spring-loaded latch is set into a slot in the right side of this knob. If you want to set the rifle on "safe", you grab the knob with the left hand, depressing the rear end of the lever latch with the thumb, pull the trigger and lower the firing pin until the protruding forward end of the latch rests against the bolt sleeve. Now the gun is on safe with the firing pin tip held back from the primer. Pulling back the firing pin recocks the rifle, the latch snaps back and allows the firing pin to go fully forward on firing. This arrangement looks quite good at first glance, but it is not very comforting to work it with cold fingers and under a low-mounted scope, so Schmidt & Habermann followed popular demand and added a Greener-type trigger -blocking safety as a factory option.

Apparently the Schmidt & Habermann Modell21 was not a real success in the market. From 1922 on K action Mausers were available again. S&H could not compete with the original Mausers.

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