Franka camera work
The Franka Kamerawerk was a manufacturer of cameras of various designs in Bayreuth . It existed in the place between 1910 and 1967.
history
The company was founded in 1909 by the married couple Franz and Leoni Vyskocil in Stuttgart under the name Fabrication of Photographic Apparatus . Soon afterwards it was located under the changed name Frankonia-Werk at Inselstraße 17 in the Bayreuth district of Sankt Georgen , in a building that later temporarily housed the Steiner-Optik company . Despite conspicuous advertising, it suffered from teething problems and had to disband several times in the first few years.
The turning point came when, in July 1915, the accountant Wolfgang Hirschmann joined the company, which had meanwhile been renamed Franka-Kamerawerk . According to an announcement by the local district court in 1918, Hirschmann "had been running a manufacturing and trading business for metal and wood goods, in particular photographic equipment and supplies, since October 1, 1917". Production and the number of employees rose sharply in the following four years. In 1919 the company moved to the city center , to the location of the former Merkel vinegar and liqueur factory. According to the information board on the building, the factory had been there since 1920.
The upward trend at the new location was initially slow. At the beginning of the 1920s, the company was gradually converted to the exclusive production of cameras. Initially, plate and roll film machines were made , and later small-format cameras were added.
The stately building at the Jahnstraße 8/10, the twice -stocking was testament to a good order situation and large production, with about two-thirds of the equipment were exported around the world. In 1948 the number of employees had risen to 154, and the owner was Wolfgang Hirschmann's brother Hans. The Steiner company, founded in 1947, was soon delivering high-quality lenses and complete objectives.
From the end of the 1950s, Japanese competition increasingly pushed its way onto the world market, which hit the export-oriented Franka factory in particular. In 1962 Henry Wirgin from Wiesbaden took over the company and managed it from there. However, he could not stop their decline. In December 1966 production came to a standstill, and in September 1967 it was finally over. The city has made sure that the facade of the building has been renovated, no use is recognizable (status in May 2019).
Products
The first product was a plate camera in the then common format of 9 × 12 cm, followed by cameras for smaller formats. In 1916, eleven models were offered in different price and design variants. The First World War brought production to a temporary standstill. Around 1930, the factory mainly produced 6 × 9 roll film machines .
The collaboration with Photo Porst began in the 1930s , and the Franka-Bubi for the roll film format 4 × 6½ was the best seller . Shortly before the Second World War , Franka-Werke brought cameras in 35mm format onto the market. These devices were only produced in small numbers and hardly found any buyers.
After 1945 roll film cameras in the formats 6 × 9 (until 1957) and 6 × 6 (until 1965) were mainly built. The Solida 1 , a medium format folding camera with bellows , which was produced from 1951 onwards, found widespread use . From around 1954, the production of 35mm cameras began on a larger scale, which were regarded as “small marvels of fine mechanical precision” with “long service life”. At that time a small viewfinder camera with interchangeable optics was developed. The super frankarette from 1959, with its Xenar lens, coupled rangefinder and built-in exposure meter, was popular . The Edixa 16 miniature camera was created in the 1960s .
Between 1951 and 1961 326,000 6 × 6 sets were built. Between 1953 and 1957, around 88,000 6 × 9 cameras left the factory, and between 1957 and 1961 a total of 96,000 small-format cameras were produced. According to an advertising brochure, production had increased tenfold between 1938 and 1956.
literature
- Eva-Maria Bast, Heike Thissen: Bayreuth Secrets . 1st edition. Bast Medien Service, Überlingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-9816796-1-8 , p. 106 ff .
Web links
- Franka cameras from Bayreuth at kameramuseum.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Franka at lippisches-kameramuseum.de, accessed on November 18, 2014.
- ↑ a b c Kurt Herterich : Through southwest Bayreuth . Ellwanger, Bayreuth 2001, ISBN 3-925361-39-1 , p. 68 .
- ↑ a b c Photo information board, May 2019.
- ↑ a b Kurt Herterich, op. Cit. , P. 70.
- ↑ Bernd Mayer: Bayreuth in the twentieth century , p. 119.
- ↑ Querying the local telephone directory: no company listed under house number 8/10.
- ↑ Franka Solida I at lippisches-kameramuseum.de, accessed on November 18, 2014.
- ↑ My Franka collection at hobbyphoto-forum.de, accessed on November 18, 2014.
- ↑ a b Kurt Herterich, op. Cit. , P. 69.
- ↑ An advertising brochure for the Franka 35 camera and a view of the production building in Jahnstrasse, 1956 .