[rollei_list] Re: "Sir John" Noble Is Dead










Some years ago at a photokina when John Noble showed up for the first time, I 
asked him if we could be related. My question was based on the fact that my 
Mother's maiden name was Noble. I received a quick and solid NO. It was Noble 
but originally Knoble. My grandfather was a tailor from Lvov (Lemburg). How 
dare I even suggest it? Sir John a jew? No way . An optical expert/tailor? I 
don't think so. Sir Louis? Sure is a stretch. Ed








-------------- Original message from Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>: 
-------------- 


> John Noble, the former owner of the Noblex firm, 
> has died. His obituary appeared in the Washingtn 
> (US) Post on Saturday, 17 NOV 2007, and can be found here, I hope: 
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/16/AR2007111602113.
>  
> html 
> 
> I can discuss the Noble family in some detail 
> (and have done so, in print and on other 
> fora). They were an interesting family of 
> quasi-USian Nazis who ended up getting it in the 
> neck from the Nazis, the Communists, the US 
> government and, in the end, from the Free 
> Enterprise system. This noble was a member of 
> the Knights of Malta and always insisted on being 
> addressed as "Sir John". He contacted me a 
> decade or so back by e-Mail and wished me to 
> assist him in getting others to help him gain 
> public acceptance that he still owned his 
> factory, long after the banks had foreclosed on 
> it. It was rather pathetic. Allow me to explain 
> to those who do not know me that "Sir John" 
> contacted me due to my being a bit of a scholar 
> on the German camera industry and not out of any 
> neo-Nazi nexus nor from any membership in the 
> putative Knights of St John of Malta, that trifurcate Order. 
> 
> The short story is this: when the Nazis were 
> dunning the Jews, business owners were forced to 
> sell at a pittance to "suitable" Aryans. Around 
> 1937, the father of "Sir John", a German-born US 
> citizen, forced the Guthe and Thorsche families 
> to sell him the Kamerawerkstatten camera works in 
> Dresden to him. He had owned a small to-order 
> printing plant in Cleveland, and one of them (I 
> forget which at this hour of the night, and me 
> without much sleep!) got the printing plant, and 
> the other got a pittance of cash with which they 
> founded a camera store somewhere in the City of 
> Lost Angels. To my knowledge, both families 
> flourished and a friend has promised to check out 
> the LA camera store to see if there are still any 
> members of the original family about. 
> 
> Around 1943, despite the open Nazi sympathies of 
> the Noble family, the Nazis expropriated KW and 
> imprisoned them. Then came the Communists, who 
> refused to return the plant on the grounds that 
> it had been nationalized before they came to take 
> over the Soviet Zone of Occupation. The Noble 
> family fought hard for years to gain recompense 
> but they were tainted by a pro-Nazi past. Most 
> of the rest is too Post-war to be of interest 
> here. KW went on to become the original concern 
> in what was later to become the Pentacon concern 
> which, by the 1980's, had absorbed the East 
> German side of Zeiss Ikon, Hugo Meyer, the Otto 
> Schott und Genossen glassworks at Jena, and even 
> mighty Carl Zeiss Jena. In the aftermath of the 
> reunion of the Germanies, the real (West German) 
> Zeiss brokered a deal to recover control of their 
> former holdings, and so they got back most of 
> what had been theirs, while "Sir John" got the 
> Noblex works, a single factory where he produced 
> a super wide-angle medium-format camera. Alas, 
> once the parts on hand ran out, he went bankrupt. 
> 
> I grieve the death of any person but he was a 
> strangely troubled man from a strangely troubled 
> family and let it just sit at nil nisi bonum 
> mortuis. Much as I feel a distaste for that 
> ultimate Milquetoast, Cicero, his words work well here. 
> 
> Marc 
> 
> 
> msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
> Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! 
> 
> --- 
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