Leica LTM Opinions, Please. Luftwaffen Leica IIIc....Restore Or Keep In Wartime Shape ?

Leica M39 screw mount bodies/lenses
Palin??? Well, my only comment

Palin??? Well, my only comment

murrayb53 said:
I agree. I've decided to have the shutter taken care of and leave the rest alone.

Gee, as long as we are all heated up, how about Politics, Sex, Religon......Palin....?????

Steve 🙂
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I sincerely hope my time comes before someone who believes in the "Rapture" gains access to the codes for "First Strike Capability". I would have said I would leave the country, but where would a safe place be........

Regarding the original post. Leave it in what we call in the car collector industry "unmolested", or "Unrestored Original" if you are concerned about retention of value.
 
"Letting Go".....

Sometime back in the early '80s, back when I was standing behind a counter selling cameras, a gentleman approached me and said he was in the market for a new camera. I imagine he must have been in his late seventies or so and I asked what type of camera he was interested in. He replied he wanted an SLR with auto everything. His only stipulation....it couldn't be made in Japan or Germany. He said he never forgot what "those guys" did to us.

There are those who can never let go.

Steve
 
murrayb53 said:
"Letting Go".....

Sometime back in the early '80s, back when I was standing behind a counter selling cameras, a gentleman approached me and said he was in the market for a new camera. I imagine he must have been in his late seventies or so and I asked what type of camera he was interested in. He replied he wanted an SLR with auto everything. His only stipulation....it couldn't be made in Japan or Germany. He said he never forgot what "those guys" did to us.

There are those who can never let go.

Steve
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Disclaimer: I am deeply aware of WWII history, and my knowledge about it runs deeper than most people. My country was occupied for 5 years and although even my mum is too young to have lived through that, I remember and I care.

But back to that older gentleman at the counter: If he didn't want Japanese or German, how limited would his choice have been in the early eighties?
 
Limited ? Hell, there was nothing !! I understood his position and explained there wasn't a thing made here other than Kodak Instamatics (a few made in the USA).
He accepted that and walked over to the Photo Finishing Department to see what was available. No sale was made that day.

Steve
 
Roger Hicks said:
There's a big difference in my book between a curio, and a symbol of evil. I was once shown the Magickal wand, sceptre, call it what you will, that had once belonged to Aleister Crowley. I found it banal.
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That's down to individual choices. However, semiotics deals with how society and the world in general see a thing, not how you or I see a thing.

Like I said, symbols are not necessarily 'logical', they are what they are. The Nazi flag is a symbol of evil. Period. It does not matter how you or I see it - it is a symbol, it is well-understood as such by the majority of humanity, and that's all there is to it. I can't change that, neither can you. Time might - I'm sure there were other such symbols in Mesopotamian times, known to those people, that we would not recognize.

Which, ultimately, is what any minor collectible can easily be, whether it's the model pigs I used to collect, non-Nazi Leicas, or Nazi Leicas. Collecting may be a route to history -- Paul-Henry van Hasbroeck's camera collection is a wonderful place to learn about camera design, engineering, the cost of labour, the substitution of capital for labour, and more -- or it may be essentially thoughtless and accidental, which I believe is generally the case.
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It could be that, but it is not. Consider the collectible anything, say matchbooks.

What drives price?

Condition, age, rarity, provenance, and that most interesting of attributes, historical significance.

The word 'signify' has some relation to the word 'symbol'. An object signifies, and it can symbolize, and they can be two entirely different things.

A falling leaf signifies autumn. It also symbolizes autumn. However, a falling leaf can also symbolize loneliness (ee cummings). A signifier is a pointer - a symbol is that and more, it is a metaphor.

So the Nazi flag does not signify evil, but it does symbolize evil.

People confuse the former with the latter, and we end up with Nazi memorabilia being worth more than items which are rarer, have more historical significance, and are in better condition, etc, etc.

You may think that someone who thought hard about National Socialism would not collect Leicas, but hell, Napoleon's Moscow campaign arguably showed him to be as big a monster as Hitler (read Adam Zamoyski's book if you haven't already). Should people spit upon Napoleonic memorabilia? An old girlfriend had a gold bee from Napoleon's coffin: there is, I think, a natural human inclination to be interested in things that have been 'touched by history' in a clearer way than usual.
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Again, 'signify' versus 'symbolize'. Napoleon's campaign has historical significance, but it does not have the symbolic value that a Wehrmacht Leica has. That can't be helped, it is what it is. The world at large isn't as willing to consider Napoleon a source of universal evil as it is Hitler. Why? No idea.

Semiotics is, in its nature, transactional; the symbol has to mean something to someone, as does the signal. To make a 70-year-old camera a symbol of evil is reification, made doubly dangerous by the fact that there is a concrete thing to invest with symbolism. My own feeling is that unless something is being used as a rallying point for a barbaric philosophy, it is not anything like as symbolic as you maintain. Indeed, it can be a reminder of a past from which we can, with any luck, learn.
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It is not I who made these symbols; I interpret symbols, as do we all.

And while you or I (or any person) may interpret a symbol differently, in the end, we are all subject to the mass rule of how symbols are seen by the populace at large. A large skull and crossbones on a bottle of liquid is a symbol, universally understood, meaning 'poison'. There may be liquid ambrosia in the bottle, but who among us is going to take a taste? I continue to maintain that when people intentionally choose to collect Wehrmacht or Nazi or WWII-era German military or however you choose to term it - items - they have a reason. Unless one is a completist, an historian, or an archivist, there is something attractive about the symbol that makes it attractive to that person - and I am not such a person. It squicks me right out.
 
bmattock said:
That's down to individual choices. However, semiotics deals with how society and the world in general see a thing, not how you or I see a thing.

Like I said, symbols are not necessarily 'logical', they are what they are. The Nazi flag is a symbol of evil. Period. It does not matter how you or I see it - it is a symbol, it is well-understood as such by the majority of humanity, and that's all there is to it. I can't change that, neither can you. Time might - I'm sure there were other such symbols in Mesopotamian times, known to those people, that we would not recognize.



It could be that, but it is not. Consider the collectible anything, say matchbooks.

What drives price?

Condition, age, rarity, provenance, and that most interesting of attributes, historical significance.

The word 'signify' has some relation to the word 'symbol'. An object signifies, and it can symbolize, and they can be two entirely different things.

A falling leaf signifies autumn. It also symbolizes autumn. However, a falling leaf can also symbolize loneliness (ee cummings). A signifier is a pointer - a symbol is that and more, it is a metaphor.

So the Nazi flag does not signify evil, but it does symbolize evil.

People confuse the former with the latter, and we end up with Nazi memorabilia being worth more than items which are rarer, have more historical significance, and are in better condition, etc, etc.



Again, 'signify' versus 'symbolize'. Napoleon's campaign has historical significance, but it does not have the symbolic value that a Wehrmacht Leica has. That can't be helped, it is what it is. The world at large isn't as willing to consider Napoleon a source of universal evil as it is Hitler. Why? No idea.



It is not I who made these symbols; I interpret symbols, as do we all.

And while you or I (or any person) may interpret a symbol differently, in the end, we are all subject to the mass rule of how symbols are seen by the populace at large. A large skull and crossbones on a bottle of liquid is a symbol, universally understood, meaning 'poison'. There may be liquid ambrosia in the bottle, but who among us is going to take a taste? I continue to maintain that when people intentionally choose to collect Wehrmacht or Nazi or WWII-era German military or however you choose to term it - items - they have a reason. Unless one is a completist, an historian, or an archivist, there is something attractive about the symbol that makes it attractive to that person - and I am not such a person. It squicks me right out.
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Dear Bill,

I understand and respect your argument -- which sounds patronizing as hell, but isn't meant to be -- but I would still argue that semiotics is in its nature regional, limited in time and dependent on personal information and choice.

It can also depend on your premises. Eco's famous example of the light in the window well illustrates this.

Instead of treating 'Luftwaffe Leica' as a subset of the category 'Nazi' or even 'Luftwaffe of the Third Reich' (let alone 'Luftwaffe'), treat it as a subset of the category 'Leica'. There is a hierarchy of the ascription of meaning; our hierarchies are different.

In a bar in California I saw what I believe, on the balance of probability, to be Mengele's hat (a uniform cap, from Mengele's hat-maker, in Mengele's size, with a reasonably convincing provenance). Mengele leaves me confused: was he the epitome of evil (a premise easily defended), or a man completely devoid of moral awareness (not a bad working definition of the nature of evil)?

Would I spit upon or destroy Mengele's hat? Far from it. I would prize it. It is a reminder of how close monsters are to us -- or worse, how close we might be to monsters.There is a Leonard Cohen poem about one of the Nazi monsters: Eichmann, I think. Paraphrased, and from memory, it says, "All there is to know about Adold Eichmann. Height: average. Colour of eyes: average. Hair: average. What did you expect? Oversize incisors? Green saliva? Madness?"

If we choose to ruminate upon that aspect of the past, a Leica from the era of National Socialism is one thing. If we ruminate upon another, it is a camera. The preservation of any artifact is a direct link with history. What we choose to make of that history is important. Destroying or negating the artifact, symbolic or not, strikes me as a bad idea.

As I say, I flatter myself that I understand your viewpoint. I just don't agree with it. At best, we can agree to differ, because I doubt we can persuade one another.

(To those who object to this intrusion upon Leica collecting: I apologize, but not too much, because I believe that such questions need to be faced.)

Cheers,

R.
 
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As for restore or not, look at the latest Westlicht auction. Two three crowns IIIg cameras. One original, one refinished. Former is estimated at twice the price of the latter. If you're concerned about the value of the camera, do nothing.
 
kuzano said:
I sincerely hope my time comes before someone who believes in the "Rapture" gains access to the codes for "First Strike Capability". I would have said I would leave the country, but where would a safe place be........

quote]

Nice to see no polarization going on other than circular B&W's.

I saw a post that the new administration is adding 78% VAT on all Leicas as luxury items owned by plumbers and dentists who make $200,000 a year,-- plus I thought all Leicaphiles believed in Rapture and other mystic qualities of a Summicron shot wide open on a classic Leica body, but only with Agfa APX 25 in R 09 (wartime Rodinal) printed on Brovira III.

Worse yet, we are going to have to pay sales tax on internet ebay Leica sales. ;-) No one asked the right questions during the debates.

Also, I think a lot of people own Leicas made during the war, marked or otherwise. In the eastern bloc countries, if you got caught with a Leica with war markings after the war, you were in for a hard time.

And yes, I have a WWII Mauser, it was re-chambered for 308 cal, stamped first with a swastika, then Israeli proof marks, then US, and probably made in Brno, so it can piss off any number of people. Palin shot a moose with it. Is it OK to put a Leica scope on it and paint the stock red?

Probably a country & western song in there.

To the OP, good idea to get a CLA and worry about the rest later.
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Funny my thread has re-surfaced at this time.

A few days ago I took my IIIc out of the cabinet and spotted a few chips of the vulcanite on the shelf. The entire shell is quite dry and brittle and can easily be removed. If it wasn't as brittle as it is I would glue a couple spots and leave it as is, however at this point I'm looking at recovering it.

Also, did anyone notice the Luftwaffe IIIc a week ago on eBay? It was offered with a Summitar and a Luftwaffe case.
It sold for $1010. The body was defaced on the back and the embossing atop the case was scratched at in an attenpt to deface it as well.

Steve
 
To me, a wartime camera is a symbol of many things:
  • of bravery (since shooting film is a lousy on-the-spot defence, when being shot at)
  • of technical accomplishment (those cameras got a beating and still perform)
  • of man's struggle to end war by depicting it's atrocities
  • of the brutality of regimes towards their own citizens (the German Kriegsberichters - war photographers- were forced to join the army as a photographing and fighting soldier)
  • of the battle between the horrors of war and the ever-present beauty of a well-taken photograph
So, I have no issues with owning a wartime Leica, in fact I have purchased a fake Luftwaffen to accompany my 1935 Leica II that looks like it made it through hell and back.
These will be standing side by side in honour of photographers like Capa, Lee Miller, Ernie Pyle and others, some of who gave their life to make us all aware of the horrors of war.

In fact, you wouldn't feel so strong about the symbolism of a wartime camera if you would not have seen the pictures of that war, that were taken with it.

A camera always and foremost is a tool of beauty, since the whole point of photography is aesthetics. Even when depicting the greatest horrors, one needs to meter, to compose, to time, etc. and all of these actions aim for the one outcome: the best picture possible. To disagree would be a carte blanche for aiming anywhere, and firing when your finger twitches, without any concern for shutter, aperture or light.

Just my two cents on symbolism.
 
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