[rollei_list] Re: Rollei TLR - The History by Ian Parker

  • From: John Jensen <jwjensen356@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 13:44:07 -0700 (PDT)

I have a Rollei book from the 30s at home ('The Golden
Book'???) with numerous factory pictures in it.  One
is of the exterior of the factory with a hakenkreuz
flag on a flagpole.  Another is an interior shot with
a portrait on the far wall with an image suspiously
like that of Adolph's.  Wrong?  Well, to do otherwise
at the time would have caused much trouble.

There is a personal commentary somewhere on the
internet with an interesting story about a young man
emigrating to the U.S. in the thirties and finding
work at Ansco in Binghampton (by a referral in
Germany).  He found that there were many Jewish
professional people there who had been 'reassigned' by
higher-ups at Agfa to safe haven in the U.S.

By a Google search I found the text:

"On December 30, 1939 I arrived by bus in Binghamton
and settled temporarily in von Meister's beautiful
little summer house in Johnson City. The following
week I was introduced to the management of Agfa-Ansco
where I found to my great surprise that nearly
everybody from the president down to the chief
engineer was a recently arrived Jewish emigree from
Germany. As everybody knows today, IG-Farben was the
terrible outfit which mistreated Jewish deportees in
their large Buna (artificial rubber) Works located in
Auschwitz. Of course their managemennt was tried after
the war and many of them severely punished for their
alleged misdeads. Anyway, during the late Thirties
Agfa-Berlin was pressured by the German government to
get rid of its high-level Jewish staff members and
arrived at the heinous solution of deporting them to
the wild west in Binghamton, NY, where they languished
at salaries from fifteen to fifty thousand dollars per
annum. These salaries were published by the local
press at the end of each year and should be compared
with my starting salary of $1,300 ($25 per week) and
the then-existing minimum wage of $0.45 per hour for a
factory worker. But even with my modest income I was
able to scrape together the $50 downpayment for a four
year old Pontiac in less than eight weeks. In
prosperous Germany I would have to work several years
before I could think about the purchase of an
automobile."

John

> 
> To the contrary, Franke & Heidecke, as was the 
> case with almost the entire German optical and 
> camera industry, were lukewarm towards the Nazi 
> Party and government from 1933 to the end.  F&H 
> and Voigtländer both attempted to avoid taking 
> slave laborers and were so nice to the ones they 
> were forced to take that the local Nazi Party 
> investigated the companies for lack of commitment 
> to the New World Order.  (Elsi Leitz in Wetzlar 
> was thrown into a concentration camp for her 
> outspoken opposition to the Nazis, and the head 
> of the German optical industry, Heinz 
> Küppenbender of Zeiss, was tried by the Nazis for 
> his sheltering of slave laborers -- he was only 
> acquitted through the direct intervention of 
> Speer.)   The German metallurgy, chemical, 
> ship-building, and automotive industries all 
> played closely with the Nazis, but not F&H or the 
> other camera companies other than KW (owned by an 
> American who had got it at a fire-sale price when 
> the former Jewish owners were forced out -- both 
> Jewish families, though, DID make it to the US 
> safely, one to Cleveland and the other to LA, 
> where some of the descendants still ran a camera 
> store as recently as a decade back).  (The one 
> German auto company to distance itself from the 
> Nazi regime, oddly enough, was Volkswagen, 
> actually owned by the Party, though Ferry Porsche 
> was a frequent visitor to Hitler because of his 
> tank designs, even though the Mercedes designs 
> were more commonly accepted for service production.)
> 
> And, Parker to the contrary, F&H welcomed the 
> British occupation.  I interviewed the US 
> representative on the Inter-Allied Council on 
> Optical Reparations, and he was very sour in 
> recounting how closely F&H worked with the 
> British -- "I wish we had had that sort of spirit 
> at Zeiss", he said.  But, then, he REALLY 
> disliked and distrusted the British, so maybe that
> flavored his remarks a bit.
> 
> Parker tells interesting tales but they are 
> anecdotal, disjointed, and generally not to be 
> trusted unless otherwise authenticated from an 
> independent source.  His books are necessary 
> reads, but hold them at arm's length and keep the
> salt-shaker at close hand.
> 
> Marc
> 
> 
> msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
> 
> 
> ---
> Rollei List
> 
> - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> with 'subscribe'
> in the subject field OR by logging into
> www.freelists.org
> 
> - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> with
> 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging
> into www.freelists.org
> 
> - Online, searchable archives are available at
> //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
> 
> 


---
Rollei List

- Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' 
in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org

- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org

- Online, searchable archives are available at
//www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list

Other related posts: