Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/08/24

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Subject: [Leica] Universal viewfinder turret Russian Contax copy
From: msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)
Date: Wed Aug 24 15:02:31 2005

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!

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In reply to: Message from gregj.lorenzo at shaw.ca (GREG LORENZO) ([Leica] Universal viewfinder turret Russian Contax copy)