The Werra, named after a small river in Central Germany, has gone from an ugly duckling to a cult camera. It has several unique features: It was made by a company renowned for lenses, but not for camera bodies. The Werra originated behind the Iron Curtain, where the Communist government considered consumer products a bourgeois luxury. The design and ergonomics remained largely untouched by modern tendencies to entice a customer to purchase the product. Time, however, has made the “made in GDR” product a classic. Today, the Museum of Modern Art has a Werra in their collection. ( I am deeply indebted to Yves Strobelt and Marco Kroeger and their fabulous website www.zeissikonveb.de)

The Werra would not garner much attention in a 1960 or 1970s photography shop. It is small, distinctly NOT shiny, and offers few spectacular specs. If you place it next to, say, the Kodak Retina range, the Werra would place a distant second. Even the most affordable Retinette model offered more capabilities. But customers rarely saw these cameras side by side in the showcase. The Kodak Retina was created and designed in West Germany, the Werra was the brainchild of engineers in East Germany. During the Cold War, few copies of these cameras made the journey to the other side. Most likely, there were more Werras in the West than Kodaks in Communism.

Carl Zeiss Jena ( the “Jena” is pronounced YEH-nah) is a storied company, surviving mergers, wars, dictatorships and overseas competition. Optical glass was and still is where Carl Zeiss rules supreme. At the height of the East-West divide, diplomats negotiated trademark violations as the company had been split in half by the division of Germany. It remains a distinction that for a period of time, the company just put the name of the town on their lenses as a makeshift trademark. “Aus Jena” (“from Jena”) was enough to convince the prospective buyer that the cut glass inside the lens was of the highest quality. Soviet kosmonauts relied on the optical glass from the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

The Werra originated as a quirk of camera production in East Germany. With the establishment of VEB Zeiss Ikon (1955) and later VEB Pentacon (1964), East Germany had created a mammoth conglomerate to supply much of the Eastern world with photographic equipment. Dresden and its environs, with its long tradition of fine mechanical engineering, now produced a range of products from medical-scientific cameras to space observation telescopes. Most Westerners got to see a by-product, the Praktica range of cameras. The export models were sold abroad to gain valuable hard currency. They emulated the Soviet Zenits, unremarkable but solid, sturdy, unkaputtbar.

By contrast, the Werra was designed by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena. The lensmaker started from scratch: what would they want in a consumer camera? It is ironic that their expertise resulted in a camera which literally revolved around the lens: Famously, the Werra film advance is not by lever on the top plate, but by a twist of the lens which advances the film and tensions the shutter. It also advances the film counter. Play a trick on your friends and let them take a picture with the Werra and have them look for the film advance lever.

Bare bones it is. No electronics, no battery. No self-timer. The color scheme: olive, like a military uniform. Then the next iteration: black, as trendy then as now. Of course, the lens is the magical component: Zeiss Tessar 50mm f.2.8. Sharp as a whistle. Beware of the aperture ring which can move very easily during handling. My example, on the other hand, has a very tight focus ring. Your fingers will get plenty of muscle exercise. Once you get the film advance move right (it’s the “Werra twist”), you can fire away.

Holding the Werra means holding a piece of history. The small consumer camera originated as a result of the death of a dictator. Stalin had always preferred tanks to butter. People did not need any fancy luxuries if the Soviet camp needed weapons to defend itself against capitalism. His death in March 1953 sparked unease and revolt across the Soviet orbit. In June 1953, Soviet tanks crushed the demand for more freedoms in East Germany. Subsequently, the Soviet leaders would pay more attention to the needs and wants of the population. Private consumption would alleviate widespread dissatisfaction. The “Little Brother” GDR soon followed suit with the declaration of the “New Course”.

Top-down: The East German Ministerrat (Council of Ministers) suggested the dedication of resources to a range of consumer items, even private automobiles. Carl Zeiss was ordered to produce a simple camera for the masses. Ideally, the camera could also be exported and earn hard Deutschmarks across the barbed wire in West Germany. The later Werra I (1955) was offered for 128 DM in West Germany, about 300 Euro in 2021. Photographic items such as ORWO paper and film, and cameras were among the few products “made in GDR” which could find customers in the West.

The first models proudly sported the “Tessar” lens design name. But the officials quickly realized that in order to compete on the Western markets, you had to abide by the rules, and that included copyright law. The West German Zeiss company owned the “Tessar” brand name for lenses. To avoid costly lawsuits, VEB CZ Jena replaced the “Tessar” designation with a simple “T” on their lens ring. Advertisements in West-Berlin praised the “Ernst -Abbe Jena” origin to indicate the long tradition. Of course, the design had its origin in the prewar “Tessar”, before the company split. East German legal worries also explain that you will not find any mention of the manufacturer “VEB Carl Zeiss” anywhere on the Werra’s outside.

In typical Socialist style, the order to build the camera came from (East) Berlin. A completely new factory was established in Eisfeld in Thuringia, on the Werra river. VEB Carl Zeiss Jena had never produced a camera. They had to start from scratch. Eisfeld itself had no significant photography tradition, and no engineering university nearby.

This allowed a fresh look at all parts and resulted in a few novel solutions. No wonder the marketing campaign (yes, there was a marketing campaign in the GDR) praised the “camera with a new face”. However, as the VEB Carl Zeiss had to answer to ministries, not the market, the Werra suffered from bureaucratic intervention and the overall disadvantaged position of East Germany in global trade. Because of scarce resources, the GDR was unwilling to purchase parts abroad, for example by paying licensing fees to West German or Japanese companies. Everything had to be developed in-house, so to speak.

Unfortunately, a clever undercover maneuver from prewar times now came to haunt the East German engineers. In the 1920s and 1930s, Carl Zeiss secretly bought up companies like Alfred Gauthier and Friedrich Deckel, securing a controlling interest in the manufacturing of camera shutters. But the Iron Curtain had severed the ties between Jena and these manufacturers located in West Germany. Now the GDR had to produce its own shutter which became a long and complicated struggle. The Werra therefore came with a new but instantly outdated shutter, the VEBUR. The lack of sophisticated features made sales in the West nearly impossible, and Carl Zeiss had to request additional funds to purchase the Synchro-Compur shutter in Munich for later models.

A vicious cycle had started: the product, intended to gain Western currency, was a flop. Any upgrades involved purchasing parts from the West, further reducing the original intention as a money-maker. No wonder the East Berlin bureaucrats started to become fiscally conservative.

When the Werra hit the market, photographers had started using color slide film and demanded sophisticated light meters. The Werra I had none, of course.

As the photographic industry hit major milestones of innovation in the 1960s, the Werra designers haplessly carried on, with several models incorporating light meters and flash synchronization which were also outdated by the time they hit the shelves. Frustrated designers tried to re-invent complicated mechanisms already incorporated into Japanese models. Fortunately, the main customer base inside the German Democratic Republic remained unable to purchase “capitalist” cameras. A captive audience indeed which also hampered the innovative spirit of the (very capable) engineers. They hit the wall. Money was allocated by the central government, and the officials did not want to hear costly proposals for improvements.

While the Werra seems to have been exported to the United Kingdom, the United States remained “Werra”-free. Maybe there is an explanation for today’s interest in the model. Certainly, the East German government eventually understood the limited appeal of the outdated specs: shutter, light meter, handling: Japanese makers were winning the battle in the marketplace against the West German camera industry, and East Germany could not compete. In 1965 the company decided not to continue the Werra beyond the year 1968 “due to the unfavorable returns in hard currency”.

The vulcanized appearance with the trademark green color apparently originated with the preferred color of Zeiss binoculars, and managers also referred to the green of the Thuringian forest as an inspiration. The Werra invites categorization as one of the few admired GDR products. Some call the overall design “spartan”. other compare it to “Bauhaus-style”.

Another unique design feature is the lenscap – it is shaped like an upside down shot glass. If you unscrew it, you can re-attach it the other way round to have it serve as a lens shade. It provides the Werra with a very futuristic appearance. Taking pictures with the Werra, regardless of the model, gives you a fascinating insight into the Cold War, industrial history, marketing, the flaws of Socialist production, and the remarkable achievements of designers, engineers, craftsmen, and assembly line workers behind the Iron Curtain. It is therefore a great example of a camera with a history. About 500,000 copies were made during the production period. As Mike Elek has concluded, there are few cameras like it!

Links:

https://zeissikonveb.de/start/kameras/werra.html

Carl Zeiss Jena Werra 1 Review – Function Following Form

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https://filmphotographyproject.com/content/reviews/2014/08/werra-film-camera/

Werra 2 – Oh Carl, Werra art thou?

Mike Elek’s review of the Werra 3:

http://elekm.net/zeiss-ikon/werra3/

http://www.cjs-classic-cameras.co.uk/zeiss/werra.html

Carl Zeiss Werra mat

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/174806

The modest Werra made it to the Museum of Modern Art.