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Re: [OM] Carl Zeiss lenses?

Subject: Re: [OM] Carl Zeiss lenses?
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 00:14:52 +0000
At 01:22 8/13/99 , Steve Worner wrote:
>Thanks Richard,
>
>I was starting to think I may have gone out on a limb suggesting that some
>Zeiss lenses were manufactured in Japan!

We need to be very careful how the name "Zeiss" is used in this thread to
preclude confusion.  The lens this thread has been discussing is a DDR
(East German) "Carl Zeiss Jena" product, albeit manufactured in Japan.  It
is not an FRG (West German) "Zeiss" or "Carl Zeiss" product.  The
appropriate abbreviation is "CZJ" (not "CZ").  The post-WWII CZ and CZJ
products are like apples and oranges.

I could go into a *very* long discussion about what happened to the Carl
Zeiss Foundation after WWII.  Suffice it that *two* companies were
reconstituted following WWII, one in the FRG and the other in the DDR, and
two *very* different reputations for them followed.

Jena and Dresden were in the DDR.  The key people including Board of
Directors were relocated from Jena and Dresden to Stuttgart in the FRG (at
the Contessa factory) before the borders closed.  940f the surviving
factory works in Jena and Dresden were carted off by the Soviets to Kiev
which created the Kiev.  VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in the DDR was created out of
the very little left.

The long versions of the sordid tale are told here:
  http://www.contaxcameras.com/home/history.html
and here:
  http://www.company7.com/zeiss/history.html

Collectors and users of Carl Zeiss lenses and Zeiss Ikon cameras use the
terminology explained above to distinguish between the two companies and
their products.

-- John

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