SidW
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Post by SidW on Oct 24, 2015 20:15:58 GMT -5
There's a remarkable story here, comparing the fates of Charles Noble, and Johan Stenberger of Ihagee and Exakta. Stenberger's company was taken into administration by the 3rd Reich and he negotiated free passage to the USA in 1942, after Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war, for himself and his Jewish wife, a remarkable achievement. Noble had exchanged his Detroit company for the Kamera Werkstätten before the war, he introduced the Praktiflex in 1939, continued to run the factory throughout the war, without being taken into administration (the standard procedure for foreign-owned businesses in Germany then). Charles Noble was still running the factory (or what was left of it after the Dresden air raid) in the Soviet zone after the German capitulation, then he and his son were interred by the Soviets, sentenced for espionage, and released in the early 1950s after intervention by President Eisenhower. The factory was confiscated and nationalized, becoming a VEB, unlike Ihagee that remained in administration to the bitter end, unredeemed by Stenberger or anyone else. Some quick googling reveals that Noble's business was probably not foreign-owned but a German company, unlike Dutch-owned Ihagee. Charles Noble was born in Germany, Karl Spanknöbel, emigrated to the USA in 1922, naturalized and changed his name in 1923, returning in the late 1930s to run his new acquisition in Dresden, his birthright was German and his business was German. Two very different fates for two manufacturers of SLRs in the same city, who presumably knew each other.
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Stephen
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Post by Stephen on Oct 25, 2015 8:40:56 GMT -5
That sounds better history than the net references I had seen, which implied Noble was arrested by the Germans after the US war declaration. I suspect he was indeed arrested by the Germans, but as he was a German by birth, then released. They were forbidden to make cameras for the rest of the war, only optics and mechanisms for military uses. But this really applied to most makers except Leica, who concentrated on cameras and servicing. Zeiss were deeply into radar mechanics, and rangefinders etc., during the war. My father worked at Malvern Radar Research centre in the war, and they got a huge amount of German radar to assess from Dresden and the villages around the city, where the Zeiss factories were hidden away on farms. Some equipment is still in store with the Science Museum. The worry was that the Germans were able to make a radar guided missile, a V2 with radar guidance, maybe the real reason Dresden was hit so hard.
Stephen.
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Oct 25, 2015 20:08:44 GMT -5
I had the general impression that some photographic sites were quoting each other, and guessing to fill out the story. I had better luck with biographical searches. Here's a link about the Noble home in Dresden, the Villa San Remo: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_San_RemoCharles Noble must have been wealthy, buying this residence in addition to paying for the factory. He was there with his extended family, not just wife and children. This Wikipedia link also mentions Seydewitz, Minister-Präsident of Saxony, (governor), who started a smear campaign in the 1950s against the Nobles after their release and repatriation, accusing Charles of having directed the destruction of Dresden from the suburban villa in collusion with the Nazis as part of a conspiracy between international capital and fascism ... I haven't seen any reference to the Nazis being suspicious of the Nobles, or any arrest. Their obituaries mention their not being allowed to leave Dresden during the war, but it would be necessary to know what restrictions there were on movement on the whole. I recall being taken by friends to see the crossing near Lübeck and the watch towers, and it struck me that the check post looked like something cosily antique out of a 19th century Märklin catalogue. Our friends told us they always had to show their passports and travel permits in the 1930s and 1940s when crossing into Mecklenburg. But the situation of the Nobles was very odd, were they there as American nationals (and potentially traitors) or as Germans returned home? They settled in Dresden the year of the Kristallnacht - what was their attitude towards the Nazis? At the very least they must have been silent party members to maintain their position as industrialists in the war effort. And why did the question of treason never come up later? Possibly because of their enormous propaganda value in the Cold War, writing books on their captivity, and doing lecturing tours for the John Birch Society and Billy Graham. I've seen two different accounts of their continuing to produce Practiflexes during the war, 11,000 or 13,000, alongside military material. For an unusual story, here's a Practiflex page by a former employee of KW in the 1950s. www.kl-riess.dk/kw.htmland a German site: www.klassik-cameras.de/Praktiflex.htmlBoth also have pictures of the KW Pilot. The bombing of Dresden is never far away when reading about Dresden cameras. I was hasty about damage to the Kamera Werkstätten, it was undamaged, as was the family villa, safe in the suburbs. The target for the bombing was the densely built-up city centre, non-stop for 48 hours. The next link is to an article by Professor James Woudhuysen of Leicester University dated 2005, who finds the motive still as obscure today as it was in 1945. Stephen's guess was it targeted radar factories, but he also describes their dispersal in the neighbouring countryside, just like British war production. My own guess is it was to appease the Russians whose front line was barely 100km away and the German lines were served by the junction in Dresden. But Woudhuysen dismisses that too, the railway was working again after a few days. www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/1251#.Vi1jF2v53oo
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Stephen
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Post by Stephen on Oct 27, 2015 15:46:40 GMT -5
Not quite a guess, I heard stories from my father, and many years later confirmation from an ex intelligence officer, about radar controlled missiles causing great worry. The dispersal of the factories was mainly to preserve optical manufacturing equipment that was not required for war production. The Russian removal of the Zeiss equipment as reparations missed many items hidden away around Dresden. It helps explain how quickly some of the factories re-opened, much of the production machinery had survived. Railways were always relatively easy to repair, that's why so many viaducts and tunnels were hit, far more difficult to repair. Noble would have been caught up in the general arrests and detentions of Americans working in Germany in US controlled companies, he, being German born, no doubt was investigated but then put back to work in Dresden.
Stephen.
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Oct 31, 2015 13:14:57 GMT -5
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