{"id":34691,"date":"2026-08-05T01:03:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=34691"},"modified":"2026-08-03T02:09:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T06:09:42","slug":"freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Elsie Kuhn-Leitz is awarded a French medal for Humanities in 1965.<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. Today in Canada we often take freedom for granted. Sadly, not so in Europe in the late 1930s and during WW2. The late George Gilbert spoke to the PHSC a few times, in one case, about the Freedom Train<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His story is covered in issue 28-1 of the journal under the title, “CAMERAS\u00a0AND THE\u00a0FREEDOM\u00a0TRAIN”.\u00a0\u00a0The story is a proud moment for the Leitz family and organization in Wetzlar (in those days many firms such as Leitz were family owned businesses).<\/p>\n

George begins his story, “In 1925 E. Leitz, Gmbh announced a revolution\u00a0in photography. It had created the first pocketable camera which could be loaded with short lengths of\u00a0motion picture film. They called it a Leica (Lei <\/i>for\u00a0Leitz and ca <\/i>for camera) and it transformed the\u00a0world of photography.<\/p>\n

“In 1933 the Reichstag election with the democratic votes divided by a doctrinaire split between\u00a0Socialists and Communists made possible a\u00a0takeover of the government by a minority party: the\u00a0<\/i>National Socialists – the Nazis <\/i>[the trilogy Berlin Noir<\/em> <\/a>by Philip Kerr gives a bleak picture of that point in our history using a his protagonist Bernie Gunther, a private eye].<\/p>\n

“The Leica rose to become the prestige camera\u00a0for the affluent family, unrivaled as the choice of\u00a0doctors, explorers, pilots and, by the mid-Thirties,\u00a0to an ever increasing body of photographers who\u00a0discarded large format cameras for the pocketable\u00a0Leitz product.<\/p>\n

“They became skilled at making hitherto rarely seen candid photos for the emerging\u00a0American weekly picture magazines such as Life\u00a0<\/i>and Look <\/i>in 1936. These new publications were following formats set earlier in Europe.<\/p>\n

“In the period\u00a0following the worldwide depression, Leica\u2019s top\u00a0model sold in America for the price of a Plymouth\u00a0automobile – about $300.00.” …<\/p>\n

Members read all of the article by Mr Gilbert in the pdf file for issue 28-1 on the free members’ only DVD or thumb drive. You can join or renew by following the instructions above and at right under ‘membership’. Email any questions to member@phsc.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. Today in Canada we often take freedom for granted. Sadly, not so in Europe in the late 1930s and during WW2. The late George Gilbert spoke to the PHSC a few times, in one case, about the Freedom Train. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[302],"tags":[2017,403,605,402],"class_list":["post-34691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activities","tag-article","tag-journal","tag-membership","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34691"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34698,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34691\/revisions\/34698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}