Günther Leitz

Günther Leitz (born October 14, 1914 in Gießen , Hessen , † 1969 in Darmstadt , Hessen) was a German entrepreneur. He was the youngest or fourth child of Ernst Leitz jun. (1871-1956).

family

Günther Leitz's mother, Hedwig (1877–1937), née Wachsmuth, was the second wife of Ernst Leitz Jr., whose first wife, Elsie (1877–1910), née Gürtler, died early. Günther Leitz had three older half-siblings from his father's first marriage: Elsie (1903–1985), Ernst (1906–1979) and Ludwig (1907–1992). When Günther was twenty-three years old, his mother died at the age of sixty.

school

The left-liberal father with an Evangelical Lutheran denomination attached importance to an adequate school education outside the state education system for his children. Günther therefore became a pupil of the renowned Free School Community Wickersdorf in Wickersdorf ( Thuringia ) in 1925 , some of which his older siblings had already attended from 1915. However, Günther only stayed a few months in this country reform home because there was a secession there that same year . At his own request, he followed the secessionists, who were mainly composed of teachers and students, to the reform pedagogy school on the North Sea island of Juist, newly founded by Martin Luserke . There he was cellist in the school orchestra under Eduard Zuckmayer (1890–1972). He documented everyday school life with his Leica 35mm camera and made close friends with Count Oswald zu Münster (1917–2003), who was three years his junior . After Günther had finished school, he visited his friend "Ossi" regularly on Juist and on his family estate Gut Kniestedt (Salzgitter, Lower Saxony). His Leica documented this. When the school by the sea against the backdrop of Nazi Gleichschaltung had to close his friend moved to the boarding school Marienau of Max Bondy . On the occasion of a visit to Marienau, Günther presented his friend Oswald zu Münster with the Leica IIIa intended for photo reporters on his 18th birthday in 1935 . This overwhelming gift meant that Oswald zu Münster meticulously documented the phases of his life for over sixty years and published them in a series of illustrated books. Volume 1 also includes photos that Günther Leitz took at the school by the sea on Juist, as well as youth portraits of him and later photos . He had a lifelong friendship with Oswald Graf zu Münster, Siegfried Ludwig and Eduard Zuckmayer.

Entrepreneurial activity

At the end of the 1940s, Günther Leitz joined the company after completing a commercial apprenticeship, where his two older half-brothers were already active. As managing director of Ernst Leitz GmbH and head of the commercial department in succession to Henri Dumur, he devoted himself primarily to the company's economic interests. In addition to the reconstruction and structural expansion of the Wetzlar plant after the Second World War , he concentrated on setting up a research laboratory for optical glass, which was opened on April 1, 1954. However, his main focus was on the Ernst Leitz Canada plant in Midland , Ontario , Canada , which he built on his initiative in 1952 and which he managed himself until his untimely and unexpected death in 1969. After the death of his father in 1956, the company was passed on to his two half-brothers and himself, which the three of them subsequently ran.

In 1967, Norman Lipton, editor of the US photography magazine Popular Photography , turned to Günther Leitz in Wetzlar. Lipton had previously worked in the advertising department of Leica Camera on New York City's Fifth Avenue . Between May 1938 and August 1940 he had met numerous German Jews there with Leica cameras around their necks, exhausted and leaning against the wall in the office for help. These were refugees from the main Wetzlar plant who had emigrated from Germany before the National Socialist persecution, with the active help of Günther Leitz's father Ernst, who obtained the visas for them and they were the first point of contact in the United States at the New York office the company had referred. During this period , a number of these refugees would arrive every few weeks whenever the SS Bremen or SS Europa docked near this office at the Hudson River Piers . The New York Leitz office rented everyone in the nearby Great Northern Hotel on West 57th Street and provided food for them until suitable jobs were found, either at Leica Camera itself or at other companies in the industry, for example in the production or administration of Kodak , at photo retailers or photo labs.

A good two decades later, Lipton wanted to write a story about it to publish on Reader's Digest . To this end, he sought contact both with these former refugees and with the Leitz management team in order to research further details. He came to Germany specifically for this purpose in 1967 and visited Günther Leitz in Wetzlar. He made it surprisingly clear that he did not want this story to be made public during his lifetime. His father did what he could because he felt responsible for his persecuted employees, their families and the roommates in Wetzlar. He was able to do this because the Wehrmacht was critically dependent on his company for the production of military optical equipment. Nobody knows what other Germans, who were not privileged in the same way as his father by such a factory or a production declared as essential for the war effort, would have done within the framework of their limited possibilities for the persecuted. Therefore, he feels it is incorrect to emphasize the activities of his father as something special. It was not until 1997, almost three decades after Günther Leitz's early death, that the matter came to the public under the name The Leica Freedom Train . Frank Dabba Smith, rabbi of a small synagogue in London, published the book Elsie's War: A Story of Courage in Nazi Germany in 2005 about the altruistic actions of the Leitz family during the Shoah .

Social engagement

• Günther Leitz sponsored the Austrian poet, writer and painter Paula Ludwig . He already knew her from his school days when she went to the school by the sea on Juist to meet her son, his schoolmate Siegfried, known as "Friedel".

Works

• Photos of everyday school life at the school by the sea on Juist (1925–1934). In: Oswald zu Münster: Photo diary, Volume 1 - Stay in the country school homes School by the Sea on Juist and in Marienau 1931–1937. At the 1936 Olympics, Berlin . FTB-Verlag, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-946144-00-7 , pp. 3–5.

literature

• Frank Dabba Smith: Elsie's War: A Story of Courage in Nazi Germany, London 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leitz, Ernst. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
2. ^ Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Historical commission (ed.): New German biography, part 14: Laverrenz - Locher-Freuler. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 .
3. ↑ Leitz, Günther . German biography. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, at: deutsche-biographie.de, accessed on April 13, 2016
4. ↑ Peter Dudek: We want to be warriors in the army of light. Reform educational rural education homes in Hochwaldhausen in Hesse 1912–1927 . Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7815-1804-9 , p. 34.
5. ↑ Oswald zu Münster: Photo diary volume 1 - stay in the country school homes Schule am Meer on Juist and in Marienau 1931-1937. At the 1936 Olympics, Berlin . FTB-Verlag, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-946144-00-7 .
6. ↑ : HG Zydowitz committed Pointing and. In: Wetzlarer Neue Zeitung, January 15, 2016
7. ^ Opus. Architecture in Individual Presentations (bilingual German / English; PDF file; 1 MB). Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart / London 2008, ISBN 978-3-932565-67-0 , pp. 7–8.
8. ↑ Günther Leitz , on: l-camera-forum.com, accessed on April 13, 2016
9. ↑ Behind the camera - secret life of man who saved Jews from Nazis. In: The Guardian , February 10, 2007, at: theguardian.com, accessed April 13, 2016
10. ↑ Mark Honigsbaum: Leitz 'list . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . Magazine. 07/2007. P. 2, on: sueddeutsche.de, accessed on April 13, 2016
11. ↑ Ludwig, Paula. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).