Wirgin
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| This Edixa is similar to an earlier camera model of Franka |
Wirgin was a German company which is still known for its brands Wirgin and Edixa, and for its camera types like the Edina, the Edinex or the Gewirette. It was based in the Hessian capital Wiesbaden and made a line of quite inexpensive 35mm SLRs from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the Edixa Reflex and Edixa-Mat Reflex. Wirgin was West Germany's main producer of SLRs with focal plane shutter. It also produced some of the lenses for its cameras, among them several M42 screw mount lenses.
Wirgin was founded by the brothers Heinrich, Max and Josef Wirgin in 1920. They introduced their first distinctive camera, the Edinex, in 1927. In 1934 the company surprised the market with a very small viewfinder camera for type 127 film, the Gewirette. From the mid-1930s it also made Edinex 35mm viewfinder cameras. These came equipped with Wirgin Gewironar lens and Compur shutter or Steinheil Culminar lens (alike Tessar) with Prontor shutter.
In 1938 circumstances in Germany had changed since the brutally dictatorial regime of the Nazi party had reached the peak of its success, pushed by the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 and the economic upswing. In their delusion of grandeur the political leaders decided to start making true all their only ideologically justified abhorrent menaces against minorities in Germany, especially against the jews. Heinrich and Josef Wirgin still lead their company in Wiesbaden, but with the help of one of their clerks they managed to escape from Germany. Max might have been already in the US, his brothers followed.
After the war Heinrich Wirgin came back from there, now as Henry Wirgin, and refounded the Wirgin company in Wiesbaden. An administrative officer of ther American sector sent Heinz Waaske as promising aspirant to Wirgin. At that time Waaske had sold the prototype of a miniature camera to the Americans. In 1951 the talented mechanician Waaske became camera constructor. He constructed the company's first SLR, a model with focal plane shutter, the first camera like that in Western Germany. He also constructed a more elegant SLR prototype, and later a complicated electronically controlled SLR wirh Compur shutter, and a stereo rangefinder camera.
In 1961 Henry Wirgin bought Franka. Several 35mm viewfinder cameras had been made in the Franka-Kamerawerk in Bayreuth/Oberfranken, for example the one visible in the picture at the right side of this page, an Edixa with builtin selenium meter and a lens with selectors for shutter speed, aperture and distance.
Made in Bayreuth and Wiesbaden were the small Edixa cameras for 16mm film with built-in meter, all derived from an original model designed by Heinz Waaske in Wiesbaden and developed and produced in Wiesbaden and Bayreuth as Edixa 16 and Franka 16.
Waaske left Wirgin since Henry Wirgin had decided to give up camera production sooner or later. Wirgin granted the rights on a new 35mm viwefinder camera to Waaske. This camera was none less than the prototype of what became the famous Rollei 35. Waaske had constructed it at Wirgin company.
In 1967 the Franka-Werk was closed. In 1968 Henry Wirgin closed his original company and continued the production of some camera models in a new smaller plant. In 1971, shortly before its closing, the company introduced a quite modern but heavy SLR camera.
Contents
35mm film
- Edinex series
- several Edina
- and Edixa models
SLR
- Edixa series
16mm film
- Edixa 16 series
127 film
- Gewirette
- Reporter
- Klein-Edinex
120 film
- Some sophisticated bellows cameras and several other folding cameras like the Rofika (=Rollfilmkamera)
- An export version of the Reflekta II TLR was sold in the USA under the Wirgin label. (see links)
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| The Wirgin Reporter |
Links
General links
In English:
- History of Wirgin (German version) by Klaus-Eckhard Riess in his camera site
In German:
- Wirgin.de website by Stefan Schaum - Holzappel
In French:
Miscellaneous
In English:
- German TLR cameras with two models of Wirgin Reflex, at Barry Toogood's www.tlr-cameras.com
- Edixa SLR cameras in Andrey's M42 pages
- Other manuals at butkus.org's Orphan Cameras:
In German:
