Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/08/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 09:54 PM 8/23/05 -0600, GREG LORENZO wrote: >So Soviet reparations extended to optical and camera companies as well. Other than opening up German patents in the western part of Germany was there significant demontage by the western allies of optical related industries? ================ That there was. I believe Dr Colonel Carl Nelson still lives: he was the US representative on the Allied Committee on Optical Reparations ensured that all of the high-end German optical stuff went to the US. (He saw his prmary foe as the British, oddly, and not the Soviets.) Nelson was the Guest of Honor at an LHSA meeting a decade or so back. Emil Keller knows him well and can fill in a lot of the details applicable to Leitz. We occupied the Carl Zeiss works at Jena from April though July of 1945. At that time, our primary concern was to shift specific Zeiss production west to the US Zone of Occupation for the manufacture of the Pleon aerial recon lens and of medical lab gear in preparation for DOWNFALL, the projected invasion of Japan. We were due to turn Jena over to the Soviets and there was no real faith in the US Army that the USSR would join in the war against Japan, so we attempted to move production to several Zeiss plants in the US Zone. In the end, several things happened: -- Proeduction of lenses was moved to an unused aircraft landing-gear plant at Oberkochen This is today the principal Zeiss lens factory. -- Glass production was moved to Mainz This is today the principal Schott glassworks, though consumer items are still made at Jena and in overseas plants. -- Medical gear production was to be conducted at the Zeiss Ikon plant in Stuttgart and at smaller Zeiss facilities in Stuttgart and Munich -- The corporate leadership of Zeiss was moved from Jena to Heidenheim. (In order to fully comply with the will of Carl Zeiss and to comply with the Trust Agreement by Abbe and Schott setting up the Zeiss Foundation, the corporate "seat" returned to Jena in 1993 but the main corporate offices are still in Heidenheim.) -- All of Zeiss' optical papers -- research papers, test results, &c &c -- were taken and were spirited away in a train minutes before the British demanded that they be shared. The US Army later had to pay Zeiss for these though these papers seem to have disappeared and their fate is unknown: perhaps they went to warm the huts of German peasants during the extraoridnarily cold winters of 1945-'46 and 1946-'47. -- The Zeiss Lens Collection was taken to Fort Monmouth though its documentation ended up at Wright-Patterson AAF and the two were not rejoined until the noted US optical analyst, Ed Kaprelian, recognized their connection and had these reunited in 1948. We also gutted the research files of Leitz, Astro, and Schneider though, as all of these were in the Western Zone, this was conducted in a more orderly fashion. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir! NEW FAX NUMBER: +540-343-8505