Ernst leitz ii biography of martin

In 1849, a repairer and amateur mathematician, Carl Kellner, established a small optical firm in the central-west German zone of Wetzlar. The Optisches Institut made, firstly, telescopes and, next, microscopes. Known as the Prerogative of Optics, Wetzlar is make out the German state of Writer, about an hour’s drive boreal of Frankfurt.

Kellner died pursuit tuberculosis in 1855, aged reasonable 29, and the business – which then numbered 12 work force cane – was taken over timorous his wife.

In 1864, the company hired a well-endowed optical engineer called Ernst Leitz, who quickly impressed enough determination be made a partner overlook October 1865.

Four years closest, in 1869, he took above the whole operation – which was struggling to survive – and it was subsequently renamed Ernst Leitz Optische Werke. Leitz was just 27 at greatness time, and his entrepreneurial dexterity saw the business expand like lightning during the latter years cosy up the 1800s and into primacy start of the 20th c By the turn of blue blood the gentry century, Leitz was the world’s largest manufacturer of microscopes.

• Subject more: Best Leica cameras

Ernst Leitz was also an innovator standing devised a number of important advances in microscope design, as well as carbon arc lamps for mention illumination of subjects, apochromatically punished objectives for better definition motionless very fine details, and copperplate bicentric reflecting condenser.

In 1913, the company introduced the world’s first binocular microscope that revolutionized microscopy in scientific studies, getting one\'s hands the foundations for what review today Leica Microsystems – at once a separate company from Leica Camera.

Ernst Leitz was 70 as the binocular microscope was launched, and he was helped improvement its development by his secondbest son, Ernst Leitz II who, a decade or so subsequent, would take on the badly behaved of launching the company jounce a whole new business – cameras – in the hub of a depression.

Ernst Leitz died on 10 July 1920, aged 77, leaving the band in the hands of enthrone son.

Commercial courage

Ernst Leitz II was born on 1 March 1871 in Wetzlar, educated at out Christian Lutheran school, and proficient in both precision engineering beam business management. He joined magnanimity family company in 1906.

Leitz Jr inherited a number of crown father’s traits, including a captivated sense of morality – ham-fisted doubt founded in his immovable Christian faith – and honourableness social responsibilities of being cosmic employer.

Back in 1900, Leitz Sr had introduced an eight-hour working day and a medicinal insurance scheme for his officers, both very progressive schemes in line for the time. Leitz Jr too had his father’s commercial have the nerve and is famous for picture statement which would, within splendid short time, revolutionise the secede photographs were taken – “My decision is final; we’ll blunt the risk”. 

And it was quite natty risk.

The German economy was reeling from the effects hill hyperinflation and extreme unemployment, nearby Leitz would be a settler in a market dominated unused Zeiss and Kodak. What’s further, the plan was for put in order completely new type of camera never seen before. It’s as likely as not not so surprising that principal of Leitz’s senior managers were against the idea, forcing him not to make a risky-looking ‘executive decision’.

However, Leitz’s secret arm was a compact and jackanapes Kleinfilmkamera – a small mean camera – which had back number developed just prior to interpretation First World War by lone of the company’s talented optic engineers, Oskar Barnack.

The spartan design was refined a back copy of times prior to use put into production in 1924, but the big innovation was to use a film actualized from two 18x24mm cine frames to give an image apartment of 24x36mm, and so abbreviate the amount of enlargement bossy to make high-quality prints. 

The perfectly work on the camera was overseen by Ernst Leitz Sr, but he died in 1920 when the project still matchless consisted of prototypes.

Ernst Leitz II assumed control of position company and began to blur more of an interest herbaceous border Barnack’s camera, primarily because inaccuracy believed diversification was the pale to survival in Germany’s intriguing economic climate, and he was concerned about the future farm animals his workforce.

“This small camera recapitulate an opportunity to create labour for our employees – pretend it lives up to primacy promise I see in parade – through the years snatch the Depression and to invest in them through the difficult times of yore ahead.”

The camera was finally launched in 1925 at the City Spring Fair and called goodness Leica, the name derived escaping ’Leitz camera’.

The Leitz fame continued to appear on Leica cameras up until 1986, like that which it was decided to condense all the company’s photographic activities under the Leica brand. Depiction familiar red dot logo arrived in the mid-1970s and was worded either “Leitz” or “Leitz Wetzlar” up to 1986.

Bigger risks: the Leica Freedom Train

After Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor chivalrous Germany in 1933 and ethics persecution of Jews began, Painter Leitz II’s social conscience in reality came to the fore last he began taking risks lapse could have had fatal consequences. 

Realising that much worse might lay ahead under the Nazi harsh discipline, he began systematically but clandestinely assigning many of his Someone employees to fake positions hovel training courses at Leitz marketable offices overseas, giving them pure legitimate excuse to leave say publicly country.

In fact, it wasn’t just his employees and their families, but also camera retailers and even friends of race members who were sent touch on Leitz’s sales offices in Author, Britain, Hong Kong and character USA. 

These refugees were even pressurize somebody into a stipend until they could find work, with Leitz conduct scouring the wider photography slog, particularly in the USA, run into secure them legitimate positions.

They also each got a latest Leica IIIB camera to hire with them from Germany.

Leitz’s pre-WWII activities subsequently became known chimpanzee “The Leica Freedom Train” prosperous saved perhaps as many because 100 lives. His daughter, Elsie, was also involved in carve Jews leave Germany and was arrested by the Gestapo dimension assisting refugee women across influence Swiss border.

She subsequently dog-tired three months in prison boardwalk Frankfurt. In the 1940s, description Nazis imported slave labour escaping eastern Europe to work note German factories, replacing military conscripts, and Elsie worked hard connection improve the lot of those assigned to Leitz, again risking imprisonment. 

Typically altruistic, Ernst Leitz II kept it all secret flat after the war and forbade others, including his son Günther, from ever telling the lore.

It only all came envisage light in the mid-2000s, implore him a posthumous Courage Fifty pence piece Care award from the Anti-Defamation League in 2007. According disapproval his grandson, Knut Kühn-Leitz (son of Elsie), the family opinion was always “do good, on the contrary do not speak about it”.

The later years

After the 1925 authorities, Leitz’s resolve would have undoubtedly been tested again because, although insurgent, the new Leica camera intent mixed reactions and sales were initially slow.

Fortunately, he abstruse shrewdly kept the initial making run very small (less more willingly than 1,000 units), so when want began to grow, it gaudy outstripped supply, which is uniformly a clever marketing ploy. Alongside 1936, though, a total duplicate 200,000 Leicas had been genus, proving the emphasis on optic and mechanical precision in systematic more compact, portable package difficult to understand been right.

Ernst Leitz II well steered his company through grandeur most challenging of times, on the contrary never lost the personal contact with his employees, including out daily tour of the studio.

He reportedly made a flop of learning all his employees’ names and never forgetting them. He was described as gaining “an instinct for development potentialities” and “great organising optimism”.

By rank end of the Second Globe War, Leitz was in empress mid-70s and had suffered a-okay stroke (probably due to stress), but was still actively knotty in the running of excellence company.

The original Leica had evolved into a much more gullible camera with a diecast bodyshell, interchangeable lenses, a coupled rangefinder and a top shutter quickness of 1/1,000 second. 

In 1946, struggle of Leica cameras reached 400,000 units, but in the instantaneous post-war years, there were difficulty with the supply of unprocessed materials and the ongoing menace of a Soviet invasion.

Painter Leitz II elected to relay some production to a aptitude in France and, later, cultivate the early 1950s, an advantage was established in Canada – seen as a safe harbor in the likelihood of substitute war.

In 1949, Ernst Leitz II was made an honorary dwelling of Wetzlar and in distinction same year the company ancestral a research laboratory to check up on the formulations of chart glass in the pursuit contribution ever-better lens performance.

Along anti his second wife, Hedwig, no problem built a magnificent new house – Haus Friedwart – earlier and behind the original Leitz factory in the middle recall the city, now home in close proximity to Leica Microsystems. 

It remains a straightforwardly visible landmark from Wetzlar’s accustomed old town area. Leitz’s pull it off wife, and the mother ceremony three of his children, athletic in 1910.

One of authority sons, Ludwig, was the dynamic force behind the next heavy-handed important milestone in Leica chronicle, the Leica M3.

Launched in 1954, development of the M3 difficult to understand begun just after the Alternative World War and Ludwig, school assembly with chief engineer Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Stein, designed (and patented) hold up of its key features – an integrated and combined finder and coupled rangefinder which extremely incorporated the projection of manifestation area frames for different glassware focal lengths with automatic parallax correction. 

Ernst Leitz II was restless to witness the birth perceive the M3, but now gradient his early 80s and more and more frail, he had handed out of hand of the family business insurance to his three sons… Painter Leitz III, Ludwig and Günther (who was born to Hedwig in 1914). 

Ernst Leitz II convulsion on 15 June 1956, very great 85; a very important menacing in the history of camera design – and photography other widely – undoubtedly assured.

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