Kiev/Contax from the German point of view

This is an absoultely incredible article/series of posts - if you read Russian it's a MUST READ, if you don't - still run it through google translator and it's well worth your time! Thanks to Alexey Nikitin for the link!

http://rangefinder.ru/club/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15284

Cheersm
Vlad

Thanks, Vlad and Alexey!
All that is a good reason to collect Kievs AND Contaxes AND Jena Contaxes.

But the lack of precision of the French tranlation is boring...

Amitiйs. Jacques.

Thank you guys.
Very interesting information. Many articles about Kiev/Contax from Photo Deal I have already read in German, but some information was new for me.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jacques M.


But the lack of precision of the French tranlation is boring...

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Jacques, you can try to translate from German to French, may be you have more luck

Regards, Alexander

Hi Jacques, you may have better luck with Russian to English translation.

Cheers,
Vlad.

Yes. I have just read again the posts. The articles of Larry Gubas and Peter Hennig are well known, as well as Kuc's books "On the trail of the Contax". The compilation of Hartmut Thiele about Zeiss lenses by serial numbers is very useful too. And of course Sasaki's book, unhappily unfindable.

But the historical point of view is really very interesting!

We should add the articles of Bernd K. Otto, cited some months ago by Ullrich. The author gives precisions about dates, productions, and all that concerns the way which goes from Contax to Kiev. All my thanks if somebody knows a "translatable" version of these articles:

http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_1.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_2.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_3.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_4.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_5.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_6.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_7.pdf

And if you know where I can find Sasaki's book....

Amitiйs. Jacques.

Thanks Jacques!

Here's a very important piece of information from that thread. (corrected google translate version)
DRESDEN: Dismantling machines for lens coating under vacuum was carried out most carefully. All parts have been described and Numbered , packed in boxes and transported by truck to a small airport in Dresden to be sent to Leningad there to be established in the laboratory. However , the landing was complicated and that the goods have been completely destroyed. The other machines and all spare parts were so carefully packed as possible , and shipped by rail to Russia . However , most of the boxes was broken into during transport cargo across Poland . One of the German war prisoners who participated in the unloading of railcars , said then that what was not stolen, was severely spoiled by weather.

Official Russian reports , as well as stories of prisoners of war returning to Germany , indicate that the loss of equipment from Dresden were so large that the idea of creating a duplicate of the company, the Dresden company Kontaks in Kiev has been abandoned. The result of careful disassembly of Zeiss Ikon enterprise for Russians was a terrible and senseless loss . In the post-war chaos , production plants in Germany were empty , while the 980 precious precision machines, assembly conveyors and their parts have disappeared during transit or have been spoiled by the weather. Really unusual postscript to World War II !

This detailed description and other written information confirmed that the Contax cameras were not made after the war at a factory in Dresden. In the early 1940s, Zeiss Ikon promised that when hard times will pass , they again resume production of Contax. However , despite the fact that the factories Zeiss Ikon were only partially destroyed , the resumption of production of Contax in peacetime still remains an illusion.

Yes.
That confirms why the Jena production lines were ordered in urgency by the Soviet authorities. And why there is only a small number of Kievs mainly made of Dresden parts (the 1947 "Dresden" Kievs).

We knew about the trains, but not concerning the plane...

Thanks, Vlad. Jacques.

Jacques : your links do not work. do you have the documents?

quote:

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Originally posted by Jacques M.

Yes. I have just read again the posts. The articles of Larry Gubas and Peter Hennig are well known, as well as Kuc's books "On the trail of the Contax". The compilation of Hartmut Thiele about Zeiss lenses by serial numbers is very useful too. And of course Sasaki's book, unhappily unfindable.

But the historical point of view is really very interesting!

We should add the articles of Bernd K. Otto, cited some months ago by Ullrich. The author gives precisions about dates, productions, and all that concerns the way which goes from Contax to Kiev. All my thanks if somebody knows a "translatable" version of these articles:

http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_1.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_2.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_3.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_4.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_5.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_6.pdf
http://fotos.cconin.de/ussrphoto/conkie_7.pdf

And if you know where I can find Sasaki's book....

Amitiйs. Jacques.

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Hi S.H.!

Ulrich's links (the "conkies")do work, I have just tried them.
I have too a paper version, if you have problems to get them. But always in German!

Jacques.

Ah yes, they work now. It will be an interesting read (I can read German, more or less).

as I'm german I could easily translate the documents. but it would be slow, I don't have too much time at this moment. if there are any other germans to join, it would be easier. we could share the task. so I'll wait until monday 7th to see. if there's nobody else, I'll start with no. 1.

I managed to extract the text from the documents via OCR. there are quite some misreadings, but with a little bit of work we will have plain german text. this will make translation much easier.

That would be marvelous. Thanks, xya...

Jacques.

Some more information from Zeiss Historica (in English):
http://www.zeisshistorica.org/sample.html

Regards, Alexander

quote:

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Originally posted by xya

as I'm german I could easily translate the documents. but it would be slow, I don't have too much time at this moment. if there are any other germans to join, it would be easier. we could share the task. so I'll wait until monday 7th to see. if there's nobody else, I'll start with no. 1.

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xya,
if you need any assistance in translation, I can join you, but I think it would be better, if you can post here the OCR layers, so everyone could translate it for himself with Google-translate.

Regards, Alexander

quote:

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Originally posted by AlexanderK

Some more information from Zeiss Historica (in English):
http://www.zeisshistorica.org/sample.html

Regards, Alexander

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Yes. And another article by Peter Hennig we already quoted too in the forum:
http://www3.telus.net/public/rpnchbck/zconrfKiev.htm

Amitiйs. Jacques.

quote:

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Originally posted by AlexanderK
xya,
if you need any assistance in translation, I can join you, but I think it would be better, if you can post here the OCR layers, so everyone could translate it for himself with Google-translate.

Regards, Alexander

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that's a good idea and would save me a lot of work. so let's have a try. this is the plain text of the first page in german:

[link deleted, new link available]

try it and if it's fine for you all I could do the rest within a few days. so please let me know via comments.

edit: thanks to vlad all the files are now uploaded to this site. the first file without number is the complete text. the others are numbered according to pdf pages further above. hope it helps.

http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=35&ParentID=4&ContentID=1586&Item=Zeiss+WWII+History+%28German%29

It works perfectly.
The best is to copy the URL in the google translator, then to put the result on Word to have a readable text.
The final result is better in English, natьrlich!

Thanks, xya!

Jacques.

Reinhard,

I've uploaded your text files into a wiki entry, I think it's the best way to keep those. See here: http://www.ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=35&ParentID=4&ContentID=1586&Item=Zeiss+WWII+History+%28German%29

Cheers,
Vlad

Thanks, Vlad and xya!
Vlad, it could be fine to put in the wiki the original texts in German too, because of the photos. If you could...

I have others interesting texts, always by Bernd K. Otto, that Ulrich had sent to me. I try to find them. Certainly it would be most interesting to have them in the wiki too...

Jacques.

Hi Jacques, since we're using English in all our entries, I've pasted auto-translated text into a wiki, we'll keep the German version attached as files.

Cheers,
Vlad.