By the 1930s, typewriters were firmly established in the workplace. While American portables were viewed as the less capable offspring of their office parent, it seems the German typewriter company Seidel & Naumann had focussed their efforts on perfecting the portable without an office standard looming over it.

And perhaps for this reason they named their typewriter Erika and made it the most visible label on the machine. Moreover, it’s in a unique type style that speaks to the brand rather than the company. Most other typewriter companies made sure you knew who made their typewriter. And if their typewriters had names, they usually said more about their function rather than their form: Smith Corona Silent, Royal Quiet Deluxe, Remington Quiet-Riter.

Olympia didn’t even bother to add a name label to most of their typewriters, since they were often obscure letter number combinations like SM3. Not exactly something that inspires. Olympia probably decided they’d let their typewriters do the talking. After all, they are superb machines.

But a name says much about what a company thinks of their product.The Teutonic roots of the name Erika suggests something that means noble. And among the Erika line of nobility, the model M is Queen, from her one-piece outer shell to her reinforced carriage rail and levers and silver-ringed glass top keys, she’s not only pleasing to the eye, but has a firm touch that retains a lightening quickness. This is not a typewriter that lives in an ordinary office, she’s meant to grace the desk of a writing aficionado.

At first you might think she’s carriage shifted, but when you actually use the shift, you’ll notice only the platen roller is lifted, making for a lighter experience. About the only quirk is the placement of the margin release. If you look closely, two silver buttons flank each side of the space bar. The second from the left is the margin release. The others are used for setting tabs and margins. The margin set is nice, rather than hunting in the back of the machine to set them, just adjust the carriage to the position you want and depress a button. Royal has a similar function called the “Magic Margin.”

While you can find Erikas with an English QWERTY keyboard (rare!), the more prevalent style is the German QWERTZ layout, where the Y and the Z have been switched. Normally I wouldn’t recommend this layout if you write in English, but typing on the Erika M is pleasing to the soul in ways other typewriters fail to touch. And if you’re not concerned with producing final draft copy on your typewriter, let the Ys and Zs swap lives, you’ll still know what the word is, mazbe. (Hint: that’s maybe) If nothing else, it’ll make for humorous copy.

Some have suggested the M, in the Erika M, stands for Meisterklasse, or Masterclass. While this seems appropriate, I like to think of her as Erika the Magnificent. She’s also in a class by herself. There is no equal.

If you’ve ever used a high-end typewriter, such as an Olympia, Hermes or the versatile Smith-Corona and thought a typewriter couldn’t get much better, think again. The Erika 10 takes the best these manufacturers have to offer and puts them into one of the finest typewriters ever made. It has the precise German engineering of an Olympia, the design flair of the Swiss Hermes and the simplicity of the All-American Smith-Corona. You’d think something produced in Soviet controlled Eastern Germany would lack the refinement of its Western counterparts, but whoever was responsible for the Erika typewriter might have taken that as a challenge to beat the best that capitalism had to offer. Perhaps being behind the Iron Curtain afforded them a kind of free market exemption, allowing them to craft the ultimate weapon of words. For these workers, engineers and designers, the one allowed act of artistic expression in a life of grey oppression was when they stepped into the Erika factory. While other companies fretted over profit margins, Erika was under no such pressure and it seems they escaped the demands of Soviet-style quotas, where quantity trumped quality. Human appetite for luxury exists in all societies and for the privileged nomenklatura in the Eastern Bloc that apparently extended to typewriters and Erika was there to fill that need.

This Erika was brought to the USA via the American European Typewriter Exchange, the name sounding like a student foreign exchange. You send us your best and brightest and we’ll send ours. However, before coming to America, she needed to be outfitted with a QWERTY keyboard. There’s a raft of Erikas floating around with the more common QWERTZ German layout or some other Euro variant. But if you’re a writer using English, the QWERTY layout is a must. And that’s what this Erika is designed for, writing. Lots of writing. Putting it on a shelf and looking at it would feel like an insult to this thoroughbred.

The keys seem to float on the wings of angels, where the merest whiff of thought moves your fingers to rapture. If a typewriter could be a muse, Erika would be her name. And if writing is your desire, she will inspire you to new highs. She’s a beauty to look at, for sure, but not to the point of distraction. After all, she’s there to work. And in the case of Erika, beauty runs in her bones. Besides the typebars, a few levers and springs, every internal part is coated in an anti-corrosion black. I’m not a metallurgical engineer, but something tells me this coating didn’t come cheap. The frame itself is not a thin piece of metal stamped out of a machine, but feels like forged steel with several layers of oven hardened enamel paint.

There’s nothing wrong with most other typewriters, they work, they get the job done, but when it comes to that elusive feel, the Erika has no equal. I’ve used dozens of typewriters, all in the quest for “The One.” That journey just ended. If you’re serious about writing and typewriters, stop looking. Get an Erika 10.