2 Zeiss Optics Firms Setting Sights on Reunification

Carl Zeiss, whose precision camera lenses are known to photographers throughout the world, has been a company with a split image since Germany was divided, and reunification is giving it a chance to put the two lens makers back into focus.

Split, like Germany, into Communist and capitalist halves after World War II, the rival Carl Zeiss companies recently sat down for the first time to discuss working together in the future.

With all eyes on German unity, the renowned optics firm is trying to heal its own division across the East-West border, bringing the prospect of a single company into focus.

As a first step, East German managers hope to turn their state-run half back into a private concern, a spokeswoman said.

Earlier this year the East German firm, one of the country’s few producers of high-technology goods of world standard, applied to be released from state control.

Founded in 1848 in Jena, now in East Germany, the company broke apart after the war when some staff fled the Communist-ruled East and set up shop in Oberkochen, West Germany, claiming the right to use the prestigious name.

Known to consumers mainly as a maker of cameras and binoculars, Carl Zeiss Jena is a world leader in specialized measuring equipment and microscopes.

The West German company has a similar range of products.

The East German concern, with a staff of 65,000, had a turnover of 5 billion marks ($2.7 billion) last year, 40% of which went for export.

Since East Germany’s hard-line Communist regime fell amid mass protests last year, the firm has been looking to team up again with its Western namesake.

But a host of problems remain to be solved, some common to all German companies split after the war, others unique to Zeiss.

There is a legal tangle over the right to the Carl Zeiss name, which has been fought in courts across the world.

In some countries Carl Zeiss Jena was forced to call itself Jenoptik Jena to distinguish itself from the West German firm.