Wandersleb

[captyng@vtx.ch (Gerard Captijn)]

Marc,

Thanks for your interesting points on Wanderslebs' life. Zeiss in the
thirties, under Wandersleb, was definitely ahead of Leitz in optical design
so Wandersleb must have been doing many things right. And Wandersleb too, of
course, has the right to make the occasional error. I feel that it's comic
though to see the man write an entire book to prove a point, the exact
contrary being demonstrated a little later.

Gerard Captijn.


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>At 10:32 AM 4/11/97 +0200, Gerard Captijn wrote:
>
>>There is also a patent
>>from "champion extraordinaire" Ernst Wandersleb (Zeiss) who wrote an entire
>>book about the impossibility to construct good large aperture extreme
>>wideangle lenses because of light fall-off (Cos4 law). Shortly afterwards
>>Zeiss and Schneider build the Biogon and the Super Angulon, proving the
>>contrary.
>
>Wandersleb began as the assistant to Paul Rudolph and rose to become the
>Prewar head of optical design at Jena; Bertele, then one of his employees,
>constructed the Biogon in 1933 under Wandersleb's direction.  Wandersleb is
>also the first designer to recognize that lens coatings on internal
>elements would allow older designs to find new life:  it was his work,
>beginning in 1936, which led to the recomputations of the six-element
>symmetrical Rudolph Planar of 1896 which culminated in the Postwar Biometar
>from Zeiss and Hans Sauer's Oberkochen Planar which those of us on the
>Rollei List find make our TLR's so delightful.
>
>Wandersleb's wife was Jewish, and he was bitterly denunciatory of the Nazi
>regime.  While all of the Zeiss corporations were anti-Nazi, most of the
>leadership was silent about their opposition -- Kuppenbender, for instance,
>was required to be a Party member, but saved almost five thousand Jewish
>and Socialist workers by declaring them "essential war workers", an act
>which caused him to be put on trial for his life in a Party Court.  (After
>the War, he then was tried by the Allies as a "Nazi", though the US Army
>sent Col Carl Nelson, the head of the Allied Optical Reparations Committee,
>to testify in his behalf.)
>
>When Wandersleb's wife was sent off to the camps, Zeiss was forced, at
>government order, to discharge him.  Zeiss protected him for the remainder
>of the War.  Afterwards, Zeiss went to rather extraordinary lengths to
>evacuate Wandersleb to the West and he was employed at Oberkochen until his
>retirement and death in 1964.  His wife survived the camps and was reunited
>with her husband in the West;  she, too, died in 1964.
>
>PLEASE!  Let's not start a political thread of any sort.  I simply wished
>to point out that Wandersleb ought not be judged on one rather
>understandable mis-calling.
>
>Marc James Small
>Cha Robh Bas Fir, Gun Ghras Fir!
>FAX:  +540/343-7315
>
>

Gerard Captijn,
Geneva, Switzerland.
Fax: +41 (22) 700 39 28