Camera Comeback

Few cameras have greater appeal to shutterbugs around the world than Germany's famed Zeiss Contax. But Zeiss has had its troubles making it. At war's end. It lost its huge plant at Jena, along with 288 of its key designers and scientists, to the Russians: on top of that, its Contax patents expired, and competitors flooded the market with imitations.

Last week, after nine years of development work. Zeiss brought out a new camera with which it hopes to regain leadership in the high-quality candid-camera market. From its $2,000.000 plant in Stuttgart the first production models of the Contaflex were shipped to the U.S.A precision instrument with watchwork-size screws and springs as delicate as a snail's antenna, the 35-mm. Contaflex weighs only 18 oz.. v. 34 1/2-oz. for the Rolleiflex and 29^ oz. for the Leica. It combines the simplicity of operation of the Contax with the easy focusing and accurate view finding of a reflex camera. Price of the new camera with f/2.8 lens: $169.

War & Peace. While Zeiss has long been Germany's biggest cameramaker. and is the second largest in the world, the camera business is only one part of its optical empire. Founded more than 100 years ago by Instrument-maker Carl Zeiss and Physicist Ernst Abbe, it is controlled by the nonprofit Carl Zeiss Foundation, which taps off the earnings of eleven owned or controlled factories "for the furtherance of the precision-instrument industry and science in general."

In its time. Zeiss has turned out periscopes for the U-boats of two World Wars, along with gun sights, range finders and other optical aids to destruction. But between the wars, it achieved its greatest name and fame with such peacetime products as telescopes, binoculars, microscopes and planetarium equipment. At the top of the combine today--and responsible for the rebuilding of Zeiss--are two crusty septuagenarians: Walter Bauersfeld, 72, inventor of the planetarium and a 46-year Zeissman; and Paul Henrichs, 71, who joined the company in 1901 and was longtime boss of its British operations. East & West. Zeiss's postwar comeback started from scratch, after the U.S. occupation forces pulled back from Jena and the Russians took over. But the U.S. had managed to salvage something. It sent a fleet of trucks to Jena and moved 124 top Zeissmen into the Western zone. Under the leadership of Bauersfeld and Henrichs. they rented floor space in a Heidenheim cigar factory, .borrowed tools and lathes, hired a secretary and put her to work at a borrowed typewriter. Within a year, more than 145.000 sq. ft. of space was rented in an empty arms factory in nearby Oberkochen. Operating on loans from German banks, plus $2,000,000 in Marshall Plan money, the plant employed 2.800 by 1952. About a third were experienced Zeiss hands who managed to flee East Germany, both repelled by Communist domination and lured by the memory of their past treatment by Zeiss, which was one of the first companies in the world to provide pensions, free medical care, profit sharing, paid vacations and overtime pay.

Last year, the Oberkochen plant, plus the new one at Stuttgart, turned out $24 million worth of lenses, surveying instruments, microscopes and other goods, half of which were sold abroad; the Zeiss Ikon (camera) division at Stuttgart, turning out everything from a $15 box camera to the $300 Contax, was able to declare an 8% dividend.

-Largest: Eastman Kodak.

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