Neumann & Heilemann

Neumann & Heilemann was a company founded in the 1930s by Billy Neumann and Willy Heilemann, two Germans living in Japan. Billy Neumann had previously worked for Krauss in Paris, and Willy Heilemann for Kenngott, then they had helped Kazuo Tashima to found the Nichi-Doku company that would become Minolta, before founding their own company. Neumann & Heilemann made the Rulex and Perfekt shutters and they also made cameras and lenses. Their logo was NH inside a circle.

Cameras

• Condor? (4.5x6 folding according to McKeown)

Note: At a Yahoo Japan auction, a 4.5x6 folder with the name Condor embossed in the leather has been observed with a Koho 1-200-B-T shutter, a Delter (or Deller or Deltar?) Anastigmat 7.5cm f/3.5 lens and a case marked Semi Condor. It was obviously a copy of the Balda Baldax, certainly the smaller version for #00 shutter size, because the Koho shutter (#0 size) seemed oversized. It had what looks like a complicated linkage to a body release.

a Condor folder, obviously a Baldax copy, has been observed at a Yahoo Japan auction, with

• Prince Flex, the first Japanese TLR

Both Neumann & Heilemann and Fujimoto used the name Prince on some cameras, but they also shared the same distributor Fukada Shōkai, and maybe the name was owned by this distributor. This is discussed in the Prince page.

Shutters

• Rulex T-B-25-50-100-150
• Perfekt T-B-1-300

Cameras equipped with Neumann & Heilemann shutters:

• Riken Adler, some variants
• Fujimoto Semi Prince, some
• Proud Semi Proud, some
• maybe some Olympus Semi Olympus I

Lenses

• Radionar 75/4.5, probably under license from Schneider, equipped some Fujimoto Semi Prince
• Tritar 105/4.5, camera unknown, shown here

Bibliography

• The Japanese camera by John Baird, ed. HCP