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cweg

cweg

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I don't know if this is the right section but I don't know where to place it.

At flickr.com I found this Link http://www.aish.com/ho/p/49082441.html
sent by Eric Marc Crawford.

I found it very interessting for the history of Leica. I read a book from Walter Benser, that starts with the sentence: "Please do NOT knock before Entering!" This sign was on the officedoor from Ernst Leitz II and it was in 1924. For me this comment said much about the attitude of Leitz in the Times of early 20th Century.
 
Sidebar: When the Germans where defeated in WWII they scuttled a ship a few hundred meters offshore from my uncle's beach house in Costa Rica. At lower tides the super structure is plainly visible today.
 
cweg said:
I don't know if this is the right section but I don't know where to place it.

At flickr.com I found this Link http://www.aish.com/ho/p/49082441.html
sent by Eric Marc Crawford.

I found it very interessting for the history of Leica. I read a book from Walter Benser, that starts with the sentence: "Please do NOT knock before Entering!" This sign was on the officedoor from Ernst Leitz II and it was in 1924. For me this comment said much about the attitude of Leitz in the Times of early 20th Century.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. It sounds like Leitz was a veritable saint. I don't mean to be negative, or snarky, but it sounds a little bit too good to be true. I have not heard such a story elsewhere.


Edit: OK, I just googled it, and found several other references to this. My apologies to the OP, and to Herr Leitz.
 
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Ohh the "Leica Freedom Train" has been talked about many times at many different photographic websites.....

Leitz helped hundreds of Jews escape Nazi Germany and Austria, through "fake" jobs set up at Leitz New York.....all the way up till June 1939 right before LNY closed it`s doors for the duration of WW2.

Tom
 
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It is true.

http://vimeo.com/4613988

See if you can find the film "One Camera - One Life" somewhere on the internet for the personal story told by some of those who survived because of Leitz's actions.

Ernst Leitz's daughter spent time locked up because of her anti Nazi sympathies

EDIT: Ah here is a link to an excerpt from the film One Camera One life - see bottom of this page

http://nemeng.com/leica/005eb.shtml
 
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Couldn't it be made into a sticky before it turns up every few month....just like the old ship.

Before I heard of that story I had read about a Leica engineer who claimed that he continued to work during wartime on the further developement on the Leica small format cameras although a standstill had been ordered. He said that he simply changed the measures on the blueprints and declared it a camera for aerial recon. I was a bit snarky then for that attempt to fight nazism until I read the story mentioned by the OP. May be the air in Wetzlar made the guys there think differently
 
When my stepfather's family, German Jews, were escaping out of Germany, they could not take cash, so they instead had a special chest built with secret panels in which were stashed a whole collection of Leitz cameras that became the family seed money when they first arrived in the United States.
 
I think those of us in the west who grew up on a diet of John Wayne movies often forget that not everyone in Germany was pro nazi at that time - after all Hitler came to power in the early 1930s with only around 30% of the popular vote and although his regime ultimately became very popular there were those who had both bravery and a sense of right and wrong.

There were also those who actively opposed him. The White Rose group for example - these were a non violent group of intellectuals who propagandized against the Nazis, all of th leadership of which were arrested and decapitated by those monsters in power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

There is quite an interested movie on the subject about Sophie Scholl the leader.

Some of Hitlers top Generals in the late pre war era regarded him as evil and even plotted against him. Some resigned rather than serve him and a few even planned (although perhaps in a half hearted way) to overthrow the regime. The latter fizzled when Chamberlain kowtowed to Hitler's demands as they felt that without international backing such a plan would not succeed and not get popular backing. I read an account of a General who wept when he heard the news knowing that his last chance to do something was gone.

I had an old German friend who was outspoken against the nazis but who got away with it thru family connections - he avoided the wrath of the regime by being called up and sent to Finland by a family friend who was a senior officer in the Wermacht.

So it does not totally surprise me that Leitz was anti nazi in his leanings. There were some others too who were brave enough to raise their heads above the parapets.

A lot of my heritage is Jewish but I do not think I am being rosy eyed here, just being balanced in recognising that there were some people who spoke out and others who probably would have spoken out if the regime were not so violent towards anyone who criticised it. Sadly of course, not enough actually did....but that's another story.
 
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