Wetzlar – The story of this camera from 1923 is worth millions: Because Leica employee Oskar Barnack (1879-1936) had asthma and was unable to carry heavy plate cameras, he invented a small, handy camera to take with you: the 35mm camera. The prototype, which Barnack used privately, was sold on Saturday for a record sum: 14.4 million euros!
It is the original mobile camera, the Leica No. 105 of the so-called 0 series. The small brass case covered in black leather with a fixed 50mm lens was offered at the Leitz Photographica Auction.
Starting price: 1 million euros. A sales sum of 3 to 4 million euros was expected.
The valuable Leica has the name of developer and owner Oskar Barnack engraved on the viewfinder
Camera for the “rock bag”
It is one of the first 35mm cameras in the world, prototype of the Leica I., the first serial 35mm camera. Barnack built 23 of them in Wetzlar. It was because of them that the mobile camera for the “rock bag”, as Barnack once said, became so popular.
►Small format cameras captured billions of photos on negatives from the 1930s to the 1990s: The young Elizabeth II (96), Germany’s zero hour, the construction of the Wall – without small format cameras there would hardly be any photos of these. And because of the Wetzlarer’s invention, mobile phones also have built-in cameras.
Barnack 100 years ago: “A small camera has to be small.”
Oskar Barnack (1879-1936) in the Leica development laboratory in Wetzlar
With the No. 105 he photographed his family life for years. There is no more valuable camera in the world for photo collectors. Alexander Sedlak, Managing Director of Leica Camera Classics: “The intangible value – the historical significance – of the 0-Series No. 105 goes far beyond the sum of 14.4 million euros.”
Barnack died of asthma in Bad Nauheim in 1936 while on a cure. His invention lives on to this day.