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"No Name" Kiev & Contax by Peter Hennig
During
the 1960s, a strange camera looking a lot like a Zeiss Contax rangefinder entered the market. It
bore no name, but the general look
was like a pre-war Contax II. On the back of the top plate of many examples there was an
engraving: “USSR OCCUPIED GERMANY.” The existence of this camera led
to many rumors, and it is probably the starting point of the obstinate
assumption that Contax cameras were still being made in Dresden after 1945.
The
camera was at first known as the “No Name Contax” in catalogues and
periodicals. It was equipped with either a Carl Zeiss Jena f/1.5 5cm T Sonnar from the early postwar production in Jena, or a West German
Carl Zeiss
f/1.5 50mm Sonnar from Oberkochen. Some
cameras had an f/2 50mm Sonnar from Oberkochen as their original
lens.
In those days the various models of the Kiev camera were not so well
known by Western collectors, though some realized that this
was not a "No-Name Contax" but rather a "No-Name Kiev."
In fact it is a nameless
Kiev 4A from 1963.
A very common theory is
that the parts were
made by Zavod Arsenal in Kiev and assembled in East Germany. Both Dresden and
Jena have been proposed as assembly sites.
The camera is a Kiev 4A from 1963 (because the body number starts with the numbers 6 and 3)
It was made and assembled at Zavod Arsenal in Kiev, Ukraine
The engraving “USSR OCCUPIED
GERMANY” is false.
In order to come to these conclusions I dismantled the
No Name Kiev no.
6307424, which had never been opened before, and compared it with standard Kiev
4A no. 6303564, which I had also dismantled.
I carried out a close inspection of the outside, for materials and performance, and then an inspection of the inner parts, such as the shutter and
transport mechanism, the self timer, rangefinder and synchronization. I took a
very close look at the details that were part of the assembly work, such as the
thread and stitching of the shutter ribbons, the type of leather used for the
so-called “lifting heel”
on the lower shutter drum, the type of electrical
wires in the flash synchronization, the type of grease on the slow speed
details, the material holding the rangefinder prism, and so on.
I found that nothing in the No Name camera differs from the equivalent items in the standard Kiev 4A from 1963. It was obviously made and assembled by Zavod Arsenal in Kiev, Ukraine.
The blank front plate does not differ, in type of chromium or surface
structure, from that of the Kiev. It must be assumed to be part of the original
design. Therefore, this camera was designed by Zavod Arsenal to be a nameless
Kiev. Its very close similarity to the standard Kiev 4A no. 6303564, and the
camera’s own number, proves that the year of manufacture was 1963.
Regarding the
“USSR OCCUPIED GERMANY” engraving, I found the this engraving very different from all other engraving on the camera.
The text appears to have been written by hand, probably by an electrical
engraving pen. The
area shows heavy cleaning marks made after the engraving. It seems obvious to me
that this engraving was not a part of the original design.
While it appears to be out of the question that this camera was made and
assembled anywhere but in Ukraine, these “No-Names” are unknown today in
Kiev. I have not been able to find anyone in Kiev, or at Zavod Arsenal, who
knows anything about this production. This last fact is perhaps not as surprising
as it sounds, because the production of a nameless Kiev intended for a market
other than Russia (and with lenses made elsewhere than in Russia) would not have
been spoken of openly in the days of the Soviet Union.
What have been the reason for putting money into such a project? I
believe the only reasonable explanation
would be to sell left-over standard lenses. If you want to sell standard lenses,
you have to offer a camera body to go with them; and if the standard lenses are
by Zeiss for the Contax, the body should be as Contax-like as possible.
First, we know that there were left-over standard lenses in Jena in the
early 1950s. The first lens program for the Contax IIa was that of VEB Carl
Zeiss Jena in the German Democratic Republic, although Zeiss-Opton in Oberkochen
managed to produce Contax lenses earlier than expected.
Then,
it appears to be the case that there were left-over Carl Zeiss standard lenses
in the early 1960s when the Contax IIa and the Contax IIIa left the
market in 1961. Probably some western company bought all these lenses at a good
price. The close-down of the Contax IIa and IIIa in 1961, and the manufacturing
year of 1963 for the No-Name Kiev, fits very well as a reasonable projection of
this concept.
The left-over (old and hard to sell) standard lenses at VEB Carl Zeiss
Jena made it possible for the western company that took them to establish the
right kind of relation with Zavod Arsenal in
Kiev in order to persuade them to manufacture this anonymous camera, which must
have been quite out of the normal routine for a Soviet company.
Probably the No-Name project did not turn out well, and
obviously many of
these cameras were left over. In 1969 or 1970 there was an advertisement in Modern
Photography and in Popular Photography
for the No-Name Kiev. The camera was
sold new in original boxes at a very low price. It came with a f/1.5 lens and an
anonymous Kiev case. (There was a small picture in the advertisement that made
it possible to identify all this.)
The reason for the false engraving USSR OCCUPIED GERMANY is
unknown.
Perhaps someone bought a quantity of these cheap No Names in order to hype the
concept.
