Montage (19??)

Unidentified footage of the Leitz factory in Wetzlar. On view are workers at partly filigree manual production processes.

Since the 1910s, Oskar Barnack, the inventor of the Leica, had captured events around Wetzlar on film with his self-constructed film camera. He documented flood disasters, city festivals, medical experiments, sporting events and the company where he was employed as chief designer: the Optical Works Ernst Leitz in Wetzlar. His films form the basis of a film archive in which local history has the same place as the effects of great historical events.