Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/02/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I again stand corrected ---- Ernst Leitz Wetzlar was owned by a Mr. Schmidheiny (Holdernank) & producing cement as their main activity. The Leitz brothers had to sell their shares to the Swiss as Leitz was losing money. As the conglomerate also owned the optical company Wild Heerbrugg in Switzerland, who also made microscopes, Schmidheiny decided to merge the two companies. After a series of management changes, the camera & lens production activities of the old Leitz company were incorporated in a new company called LEICA. The company found a former Furniture factory in Solms and moved from Wetzlar to start production there. Marvin Moss