Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/09/29

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To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: Some Leica moments to share
From: Brian Reid <reid>
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 96 12:58:39 PDT
Cc: reid

I have met him. He's amazing and wonderful and a tribute to the human
spirit.
His name is spelled Stefan Lorant, with an O.
His book is called "I was Hitler's Prisoner".
In my mind he is much more famous for having invented "Weekly
Illustrated", which is what Life and Look were reputed to be imitations
of.

The Pittsburgh department-store magnate Edgar Kaufman (who commissioned
Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater) had commissioned Stefan
Lorant to write a pictorial history of Pittsburgh. Lorant did this, and
then when he was unable to find a publisher for the book he published
it himself.

In 1973 I needed to self-publish a book for Carnegie-Mellon University,
and I knew that Lorant had done this book, so I looked him up to find
out how he had done it. At the time he lived in Lenox, Massachusetts. I
had my Leica IIIf RDST with collapsible 2.8/50 Elmar under my arm when
I met him (as I always did) and I was somewhat taken aback that he paid
more attention to it than to me for the first 5 minutes.

That was 23 years ago, and I thought of him as being elderly even then.
The man is a walking miracle.

Brian Reid

In reply to: Message from cmiller@berkshire.net (Curt Miller) (Some Leica moments to share)