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Leitz Employee newsletter, 1943


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I have an 8 page document that appears to be some type of internal employee newsletter for Leitz.  Dated Jan-March 1943, and marked "Oberkochen".  Perhaps a branch and not the Wetzlar factory. It seems to cover: new births, deaths, marriages, fallen soldiers and perhaps some sports news to improve the moral.  I have attached page one below, hopefull it can be zoomed and read. There is nothing about cameras or lenses.

Is anyone famaliar with these types of 'employee' material ?   Note the airplane at the top, coupled with the word Leitz.  I have the Zeiss magazines which were called  Objectif, but I have not seen to many for Lietz, especially during the war.  Are there any in the Leitz museum that were saved from the old factory library?  

I could photo all pages if someone has an interest.

 

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"Leitz Oberkochen" has nothing to do with Leitz Wetzlar. It is a factory for tools for wood or plastic, still existing today. http://www.leitz.org/?lang=de

 

The name "Leitz" is not rare in German industry. It is most famous (in Germany) as a producer of "Leitz-Ordner" (case binder) and "Leitz-Locher" (hole puncher), which you find almost in every household, bureau or enterprise:

http://www.leitz.com/de-at/products/ordner-und-ordnungsmittel/ordner/

 

Leitz Wetzlar had their own newsletter for the staff: "Leitz Objektiv". I am not sure if it existed already during wartimes, but for sure after the war: https://www.zvab.com/magazine-zeitschriften/Objektiv-Heft-1957-Werkzeitschrift-Angehörigen-Optischen/5137085564/bd

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Thanks for the information and clarification. 

I do have the Objectiv magazines from number 1, August 1952 to number 101, 1985.  No sure if they continued after that. And as you say, they are Leitz and not Zeiss as I thought.

Here is the first issue:

 

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The front page of the document seems to deal with the award of medals and crosses to Leitz Oberkochen employees. I could be wrong. Perhaps, some German speaking member could confirm. I am familiar with the Leitz binder system which I came across many times in various offices during my working life.

 

 

William

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The front page of the document seems to deal with the award of medals and crosses to Leitz Oberkochen employees.

 

 

That's right.

 

Interesting... which kind of "employees' magazine" is this ? I mean, is it of the kind of a sort of "our community and how we organize our free time" or is it a "house organ" mostly centered on work and workplace ?

 

I havn't seen a copy yet, though I presume it covered both sides. At this time there were several thousand people employed by Leitz. So there was some interest in what other branches were doing as well as many social topics - beginning at social security or housing (Leitz had own organisations for this and rented houses to employees) or sports clubs, common travels etc.

 

Though I think that one may find some interesting facts about production as well. I sometimes saw "Objektiv" quoted in reports about the products and their development.     

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This newsletter does not appear to be related to Ernst Leitz Wetzlar, but rather another firm under Fritz Leitz. It is cut off on the right side of the image. The appearance of the firm's name (logo?) appears to be quite different from that of Leitz Wetzlar as well.

 

The old Leitz Objektiv is a very interesting publication. It covered the usual corporate organ type of stuff such as retirements and deaths. It also had a recipe section, for "Eintopf" (one cover or single pot) meals that could be made quickly and easily. What is more interesting is the series entitled "Leitz A-Z", which were stories about various departments and aspects of life at Leitz for the Leitzianers so they would have an appreciation of what their fellow employees were doing in the different departments of the company. Management at Leitz took a very paternalistic outlook towards their employees, which is quite rare these days. There was a true feeling of "family" at the firm. The Leitz family was very concerned with the welfare of the employees, from the concern for Jewish employees during the Third Reich and how to get them out of Germany, to obtaining basic foodstuffs during the period of hyperinflation in the 20's to the very hard times after the Second World War.

 

If you can get some copies of the old Leitz Objektiv, they are quite illuminating!

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I just took a closer look at the original newsletter. It is for the firm Fritz Leitz Maschinenfabrik G.m.b.H. Completely different firm from Leitz Wetzlar. From the logo in the upper left corner, it would suggest that the firm produced machine parts for the aviation industry. This would be a very important (strategic) industry in Germany at this time. The newsletter also talks about "Unserer Lehrlings" - our apprentices. These awards were probably for meeting production quotas for the war effort.

 

Someone who is a native German speaker could probably provide more info. :-)

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I can read and understand most of it.

The text says that a community, also a community of factory workers, needs to be maintained, and that's what this newsletter is meant for. The teacher-ermployee is congratulated with the good result of the trainees. Then in two sections the names are listed of those who received the "Kriegsverdienstmedaille", a decoration (two different levels apparently). So those seem to be employees of the firm Frits Leitz.

This company apparently still exists in Oberkochen, it is a firm that produces precision tools to process wood and synthetic material.

Lex

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I obtained my bound copies of the Leitz Objektiv many years ago (mid 80's) from Ken Hansen when he had his store in New York City. BTW, Jim Lager was working there at the time. They are in German, so they must have belonged to a Leitz New York/New Jersey employee originally from Germany. If you do a google search, you can purchase copies of them from various sources. It would be nice to have it in digital form!

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Thanks to all.  Now we all know the newsletter in the early winter of 1943, was Fritz Leitz.  Probably should have been obvious to me, as our Wetzlar Leitz with great perserverance marked everything including documentation with "Ernst Leitz Wetzlar".  Here are two more pages for the few that were interested. They may show the mind-set in Germany at the time.

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Here are the covers of the first few Obfectiv Leitz Wetzlar magazines.  As well described above, mostly employees at work, different departments, for example the Chemistry Laboratory!, lots of news from Midland Canada, some from New York, many photos of the now greats: Leitz Sr, .and Jr., Gunther, Ludwig,  Kluck, Henry Mann, Emil Keller, Dumur, Stockler,Wolff, Tritschler, and the big three, Barnak, Bauer and Berek. Just what I quickly saw in the first issues.

The April 1954 announces the new M3,  December 1952 shows the 1,000,000 th lens a Summarit.

The cover of the M3 issue caught my eye, with all the Summicrons in a tray. I noticed two lenses have identical serial numbers  No. 191293. 

Not even close to being a correct production serial, even with a missing number on the end.  This is an unassigned 1933 lot per Thiel, close to the early Summars. Is it possible that a few Summicrons were assigned this number during prototyping for the bayonet mount?  The screw mount Summicorn had already been available for a while.

Any ideas here, or did I miss something?

I am not aware of the availability or digital or even transcribed Objectiv issues.  I would love to see them in English as there seems to be a lot of information.

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You can be rather sure that the serial numbers you see on photos by Leitz publications are not the real numbers for the products. They changed the photos to avoid any hints to their actual state of production. No. 119193 would lead to a serial of 5000 Summicrons from 1954, so may be the first 1 was „photoshopped“ and the „fake“ was applied to both lenses you show - look at the light reflections of the front lens, whichbare exactly the same

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We had a case here, which you may have introduced, Alan, where Leica clearly just touched up pictures of lenses for catalogues and other publications. I showed one example where, in two different manuals for a IIIf, Leica had touched up a picture of a Summitar to make it a Summicron without changing other details. This was from around the exact same period as the 'Objektiv' magazine. It would be a mistake to read too much into these photographs.

 

William

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