Studio Rolleiflex

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I've only seen one mention of a Studio Rolleiflex, it was in Arthur Evans book "Collectors guide to Rollei cameras. Is there some place where I could read more information about it?

[rayhf]

I've looked in my Collectors Guide for Rollei and apparently the Studio was a 9x9 twin lens - sometimes called Giant Rollei, with good reason! It had a 100mm f4.5 Zeiss Tessar and was made between 1932 and 1934. It used 122 film. Very, very rare. Apparently, Rick Olson had one and he sold it to Rollei for their German museum.

Ray

[Eddie Vaughan]

Ian Parker's history of Rollei twin lens reflex cameras explains that a very small number of prototype Rollei 9 x 9 studio cameras were produced in 1932 - 33 after Salomon Kahn, representing the highly regarded Kardas photographic studio in Berlin, spoke to Paul Franke about the possibility of developing a Rolleiflex studio camera with similar features to the 6x6 Rolleiflex. Two different prototypes were produced, one with a 3..8/105 Tessar and the other with a 4.5/100 Tessar, and Kahn chose the latter to take a photograph of Hitler for a new stamp soon to be issued. Four prototypes were sent to the USA and two to Britain, to test whether a Rolleiflex studio camera would be a successful seller in those markets. Two others were shown at the 1932 Berlin photo fair, along with the portrait of Hitler. Rollei was confident that the camera had a future.

Unfortunately, National Socialist politics, and later the second world war, put an end to the studio camera. Parker describes what happened as a shameful part of Rollei's history. Salomon Kahn was Jewish, and Franke and Heidecke, who (like many other German industrialists in the 1930s) were supporters of the German National Socialist Party. Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and, as we know, Jewish citizens were soon to suffer. Franke and Heidecke became embarrassed by the firm's connection with Kahn, who was arrested and sent to Dachau. He was never seen again. The British prototypes were destroyed in the wartime bombing of London, and mystery surrounds what eventually happened to those that were sent to America. Two survive in the Braunschweig municipal museum, and one in the Jersey photo museum.

This is a very brief summary of Ian Parker's story of the Rolleiflex studio camera, and he admits that it is a sad story that leaves many questions unanswered. In the meantime, if you see one on eBay then then it will most likely be a very expensive fake

Eddie Vaughan