  Steering of negatively charged particle beams below 1 GeV has demonstrated to
be possible with thin bent silicon and germanium crystals. A newly designed
mechanical holder was used for bending crystals, since it allows a
remotely-controlled adjustment of crystal bending and compensation of unwanted
torsion. Bent crystals were installed and tested at the MAMI Mainz MIcrotron to
achieve steering of 0.855-GeV electrons at different bending radii. We report
the description and characterization of the innovative bending device developed
at INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (LNL).
