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It wasn't exactly a boycott, but in the late 1930s many Americans were loath to purchase German goods because of Nazi persecution of the Jews. Aside from Graflex and Speed Graphic cameras and some view cameras, serious amateurs and professionals found American-made cameras—Kodak 35s, Ciroflexes, Perfexes—rather primitive, and often poorly made. And while Kodak produced the 35mm interchangeable lens 35mm Ektra camera, it was a delicate beast with most peculiar controls (I know, I have one!). When pros needed dependable, advanced cameras and lenses, they were usually talking about German cameras, principally Leica cameras made by Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH. Many pros and serious amateurs bought them, reluctantly, because of the origin.
So you can imagine the personal anguish this situation might have proved in the late 1930s for a 25-year-old employee of E. Leitz, Inc. in New York, Norman C. Lipton. What excuse could a Jew give for working for a German company such as Leitz?
A good one, it turned out, but how much was Lipton able to explain except privately? I'm not certain. During the 1950s when he was Popular Photography's Managing Editor, Lipton kept quiet and as late as 1967, he was forbidden to write what he knew by no less a personage than Guenther Leitz, son of Ernst Leitz II who made the decision to produce the Leica in the recession year 1925 saying "Barnack's camera shall be made." Guenther Leitz 's admonition about writing what the company had been up to was: "Absolutely not! Not while I'm alive."
Two years later Guenther Leitz was gone, but for reasons not known, Lipton never did get the chance to write the story for Readers Digest, as he wished, or for Popular Photography either. His story finally did appear in the December 1999 issue of Photo International, a Japanese trade magazine, now discontinued.
In today's inquisitional lingo, what did Lipton know and when did he know it?
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