Post by PeterW on Aug 3, 2007 20:34:05 GMT -5
A short time ago, I can't remember what thread it was in, I wrote that I thought the Moskva, although copied from the Super Ikonta, was designed by Russian engineers in Krasnogorsk. I've since talked with various people about this, including a knowledgeable German collector, and have to modify what I said.
In their war reparations the Russians never got hold of the jigs and fixtures for making the Super Ikonta, they were safely in Stuttgart, a long way west of Russian ocupied Germany, where the Super Ikonta was made.
But they did get hold of both assembly and detailed parts drawings of the 6x9 Super Ikonta, duplicates of which were kept at Zeiss Ikon headquarters in Dresden, and which survived the fire bombing.
The Russians, as is well known, 'persuaded' a number of Zeiss Ikon technicans to go to Russia to help set up camera production lines. Most people have heard of the ones who went to Kiev, but apparently a number also went to other factories including that at Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow, to the KMZ factory to help set up the Moskva production line. As they were from Dresden and not from Stuttgart, they had no first-hand knowledge of the jigs and fixtures for the Super Ikonta so these were, it seems, designed as a joint effort between German and Russian technicians.
It helped that some of the Russian technicians in KMZ spoke good German. This, it seems, was not the case in Kiev where manufacturing production was delayed while the Russians went on crash langauge learning courses. This may possibly account for stories that quite a few early Kievs were assembled from Contax parts originally made in Dresden and shipped out to Russia. It's possible to demonstrate assembly without the other person knowing very much about your language.
Also, during these talks, I was told the story, though I have absolutely no proof other than word of mouth, behind the Zeiss and Zeiss Ikon archives which were presumed lost in the fighting but many of which have slowly been coming to light since the reunification of Germany.
The story is that the Zeiss Stiftung, or Zeiss Foundation, which controlled all the Zeiss operations, saw the inevitable collapse of Germany and in late 1944 arranged for boxes of archives to be stored in the homes of selected Carl Zeiss employees in and around Jena.
With typical Zeiss forethought, they didn't choose directors or even managers, in case the Russians suspected this and searched their homes - as, indeed, happened. They chose trusted shop-floor employees who took the boxes in secret and hid them safe from both the Americans and the Russians and, indeed the East German communist regime, waiting for the time when Germany would once again be a united independent country.
Records of who had what were not kept, that was thought too dangerous, and the boxes are slowly being produced by the sons and daughters, or even grandsons and granddaughters, of the original custodians and returned to Carl Zeiss in Jena which is now once again independent of government control. Such was the degree of Zeiss employee loyalty. Another example of 'Politicians and regimes come and go, but Zeiss goes on for ever'.
PeterW.
In their war reparations the Russians never got hold of the jigs and fixtures for making the Super Ikonta, they were safely in Stuttgart, a long way west of Russian ocupied Germany, where the Super Ikonta was made.
But they did get hold of both assembly and detailed parts drawings of the 6x9 Super Ikonta, duplicates of which were kept at Zeiss Ikon headquarters in Dresden, and which survived the fire bombing.
The Russians, as is well known, 'persuaded' a number of Zeiss Ikon technicans to go to Russia to help set up camera production lines. Most people have heard of the ones who went to Kiev, but apparently a number also went to other factories including that at Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow, to the KMZ factory to help set up the Moskva production line. As they were from Dresden and not from Stuttgart, they had no first-hand knowledge of the jigs and fixtures for the Super Ikonta so these were, it seems, designed as a joint effort between German and Russian technicians.
It helped that some of the Russian technicians in KMZ spoke good German. This, it seems, was not the case in Kiev where manufacturing production was delayed while the Russians went on crash langauge learning courses. This may possibly account for stories that quite a few early Kievs were assembled from Contax parts originally made in Dresden and shipped out to Russia. It's possible to demonstrate assembly without the other person knowing very much about your language.
Also, during these talks, I was told the story, though I have absolutely no proof other than word of mouth, behind the Zeiss and Zeiss Ikon archives which were presumed lost in the fighting but many of which have slowly been coming to light since the reunification of Germany.
The story is that the Zeiss Stiftung, or Zeiss Foundation, which controlled all the Zeiss operations, saw the inevitable collapse of Germany and in late 1944 arranged for boxes of archives to be stored in the homes of selected Carl Zeiss employees in and around Jena.
With typical Zeiss forethought, they didn't choose directors or even managers, in case the Russians suspected this and searched their homes - as, indeed, happened. They chose trusted shop-floor employees who took the boxes in secret and hid them safe from both the Americans and the Russians and, indeed the East German communist regime, waiting for the time when Germany would once again be a united independent country.
Records of who had what were not kept, that was thought too dangerous, and the boxes are slowly being produced by the sons and daughters, or even grandsons and granddaughters, of the original custodians and returned to Carl Zeiss in Jena which is now once again independent of government control. Such was the degree of Zeiss employee loyalty. Another example of 'Politicians and regimes come and go, but Zeiss goes on for ever'.
PeterW.
