Somewhere in 1950s Germany, this very Geha fountain pen was probably being used to write something terribly important while its owner sat beside a cup of Kaffee that had long since gone cold. Maybe it was a love letter, although the writer would first have needed to overcome the considerable difficulty of sounding romantic without becoming embarrassing. Perhaps the recipient was waiting impatiently for the post, unaware that the entire message had been rewritten because one sentence did not look quite right. Nothing says German romance like meticulous handwriting and an unnecessarily long internal debate about punctuation.

In 1918, Heinrich and Conrad Hartmann founded a company with a name only a mother (or perhaps a German grammar teacher) could love: Gebrüder Hartmann. Sensibly, they trimmed it down to GeHa before anyone sprained a tongue. While their early years were devoted to less inky pursuits, Geha made a dramatic entrance into the fountain pen world in the 1950s. And not quietly, either. They introduced the now-legendary ink reserve tank; a brilliant little backup reservoir activated by poking a pin under the feed. Like a secret chocolate stash for writers, it came to the rescue when the main supply ran dry. By the 1970s, Geha Schoolpens were everywhere; smuggled into pencil cases, chewed at the ends by nervous students, and boldly holding their ground next to Pelikan. A cult favourite in classrooms and a quiet revolution in nibbed engineering.