Camera works in Niedersedlitz

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Former camera works in Niedersedlitz at Bismarckstrasse 56 in Dresden; Old building from 1939 on the left, "high-rise" on the far right

The VEB Niedersedlitz camera works and its private predecessor companies ( Camera & workshops Guthe Thorsch GmbH and camera shops Charles A. Noble ) were among the most technically innovative companies in the camera industry Saxon the 1930s to 1950s. This is where the world-famous Praktica was constructed. After thirty years of membership in the GDR optical industry combines , a private successor company has existed again since 1992 (Camera Factory Dresden) .

history

After Paul Guthe had been working in the field of camera manufacture since 1915, he founded the camera workshops Guthe & Thorsch GmbH ("KW") in Niedersedlitz near Dresden together with Benno Thorsch in 1919 . Thorsch paid Paul Guthe out in the 1930s. As a Swiss citizen with one Jewish parent, Benno Thorsch left Germany for the USA in 1938. He traded the company for a prosperous photography business in Detroit .

The Dresden company was acquired by the German-born, US American family Noble and managed by Charles A. Noble and his son John H. Noble . The company now traded as the camera workshops Charles A. Noble . Charles A. Noble made the strategic decision to concentrate on single-lens reflex cameras in business and moved into larger premises in Bismarckstrasse 56 in 1939. Cameras continued to be produced during the Second World War . The operation was not destroyed.

On June 5, 1945, Charles A. and John H. Noble were expropriated by the Soviet occupying forces , deported to NKVD camps and the company was nationalized. Charles was able to return to the USA in 1952. However, his son John was sentenced to 15 years of forced labor in the Siberian Gulag in 1950 . He was not released until 1955.

In order to accelerate the seemingly hopeless production of the 50,000 cameras required by SMA for the Praktiflex and Pilot Super models , the designer of Zeiss Ikon , Siegfried Böhm , was sent to the company. Böhm started on January 12, 1946 and introduced the first design changes with version 13 of the 2nd generation Praktiflex. With the Praktiflex II, the lens connection was changed from M40 to M42 . From January 1, 1948, Böhm was appointed operations manager. Even the still modest production figures could only be achieved in 1948 through illegal "barter deals". An official investigation against Böhm was stopped in early 1950. It was only with the Praktiflex III developed in 1948 - the first " Praktica " - through the introduction of industrial construction and production methods by Böhm, that significant increases in production could be achieved from 1950.

From 1949 the first extensions were built in Niedersedlitz, u. a. an intermediate building (1949–1951), which roughly doubled the operating area. In the years 1953–1957, a further substantial expansion (six-story “high-rise”) was built, partly on a neighboring property.

In a first step towards concentration, the VEB Belca factory was taken over on January 1, 1957. Together with a number of other Dresden camera companies, the Niedersedlitzer Mechanik Kamera Werkstätten VEB were incorporated into the newly founded VEB Camera and Kinowerke Dresden in 1959 . From 1964 the camera works belonged to the VEB Pentacon , Dresden, as the VEB Camera and Kinowerke Dresden then called themselves.

In 1990 John H. Noble returned to Dresden with his brother Georg Noble , where he sought restitution of his former camera factory and the naming rights at the Treuhandanstalt . Noble received the entire, meanwhile greatly enlarged company premises, but not the naming rights to Pentacon , Praktica and Praktina . Instead, the trust sold the naming rights to Heinrich Manderman . A resumption of Praktica production (BX 205) initially planned by Noble with 122 employees therefore did not materialize. Instead, 1991 BC a. started work on a panorama camera (see below) (36 employees). Because of the success of the camera, 96 people were employed again in 1996. After that, however, there was a financial crisis, as a result of which Noble sold the company in 1997 (to the Noblex developer Hans-Jörg Schönherr, among others). From May 25, 1998, the company traded under the name of Kamera Werke Dresden GmbH . In 1999 Hans-Jörg Schönherr and Matthias Richter resigned and initially set up a company for special cameras (KST-Dresden) in Pirna . Optics development no longer takes place in the Dresden camera works.

The building complex on Bismarckstrasse is one of the technical monuments in Dresden today . As a striking industrial building in Lower Sedlitz, it is significant in terms of architecture and local history. The six-story head building is emphasized as a clear cube with ribbon windows based on the Bauhaus style, in which only the flat hipped roof is traditional.

Products

Patent case (1920–1938)

The camera workshops celebrated their first commercial success with the Patent Etui , a very small folding camera for films measuring 9 × 12 cm and 6.5 × 9 cm. The patent case was produced from 1920 to 1938.

Pilot (from 1931)

In 1931 KW brought out the Pilot, the first two-lens reflex camera for 3x4 cm negatives. The Pilot Box for 6x9 cm medium format roll film followed in 1932 and the Pilot 6 for 6x6 cm negatives in 1939 . The Pilot 6 and Pilot super were single-lens reflex cameras. The Great Wall from China was developed from these cameras. The Pilot Super , available from 1938, had interchangeable lenses.

Reflex box (1933)

As an early, single-lens reflex camera, WK had a box camera on offer. The lens used u. a. a Steinheil Actinar 1: 4.5 / 105 mm (higher quality option). The camera uses the film format 6 × 9 cm.

Praktiflex and Praktica

Already in 1938 - two years after the Kine Exakta from Ihagee  - Guthe & Thorsch produced the first one-lens 35mm mirror reflex cameras of the Praktiflex model . The main development work was done by Benno Thorsch and Alois Hoheisel . The new owners of the Noble family brought the Praktiflex onto the market in 1939.

The first Praktica camera was then constructed on the basis of the Praktiflex by Siegfried Böhm in 1948 and (again) presented in 1949.

Internship

A camera intended for professional use, also developed by Böhm for the Niedersedlitz camera factory, was the internship . It was brought out for photokina 1952 and continuously developed in the following years (for example Praktina FX , series production from 1953; Praktina IIa : 1958–1960). The Praktina uses its own Praktina bayonet and not the M42 connector typical of the early Praktica series .

Praktisix and Pentacon Six

The Praktisix and its successor models in the Pentacon Six series were 6x6 cm medium format cameras . In terms of construction, they were more similar to single-lens single-lens reflex cameras such as the Praktina in-house than the competing products from Rollei or Hasselblad . Siegfried Böhm was also involved in the construction.

The Praktisix was the first model to be presented at photokina in 1956 and it was in series production from the following year. In 1959, the "KW" logo was exchanged for the Ernemann tower of the later VEB Pentacon . The Praktisix II came onto the market in 1964, the Praktisix IIa with pull-out spool counter bearings in 1966. A total of around 28,000 pieces were produced.

Also in 1966 the Pentacon Six with further structural changes appeared , from 1969 in the version of a Pentacon Six TL . For the Pentacon Six TL, a TTL prism was offered for simplified exposure measurement ( through the lens metering ). The Pentacon Six TL was built until 1990.

Under the name " Exakta 66 " a company of the later Pentacon buyer Heinrich Manderman brought three upgraded versions of the Pentacon Six TL onto the market from 1984, some of which consisted of original Pentacon Six parts.

Noblex panorama camera

The Noblex Pro , a panoramic camera, was developed in 1992. The 35mm version Noblex 135 was added in 1994.

Other products

Guthe & Thorsch ("KW") also sold a smaller episcope that was placed as a whole on the surface to be projected. In 1938 the Praxidos enlarger with "fully automatic focusing" was on offer.

Web links

Commons : Kamera-Werke Niedersedlitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.john-noble.de , correction by Katharina Förster-Noble, accessed June 15, 2011
  2. ↑ www.nytimes.com , Douglas Martin, November 26, 2007; accessed June 15, 2011
  3. ↑ a b c KW. Retrieved May 12, 2020 (English).
  4. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. P. 220
  5. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. P. 68
  6. ^ MDR : Portrait of Sir John H. Noble ( memento of July 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), February 11, 2005
  7. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. P. 68
  8. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. Pp. 68-72
  9. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. Pp. 72-73
  10. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. P. 72
  11. ^ Gerhard Jehmlich (2009) The VEB Pentacon Dresden - History of the Dresden camera and cinema industry after 1945. Sandsteinverlag. Pp. 220-222
  12. ↑ http://www.kwdo.de/deutsch/historie/inhalt.htm
  13. ↑ Patent case. Retrieved May 12, 2020 (English).
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Mesow, Heinz Kuhn: Photography: 150 years of cameras from Dresden . VEB Pentacon Dresden (Ed.), 1988.
  15. ↑ The internship system. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .
  16. ↑ W. Mesow, H. Kuhn (1988) Photographie - 150 years of cameras from Dresden. Published by VEB PENTACON DRESDEN. P. 27
  17. ↑ Series of the Pentacon six. Retrieved May 12, 2020 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 0 '  N , 13 ° 49'  E