The Sound of Rollei

In 1921, tradesman Paul Franke and precision engineer Reinhold Heidecke established a company in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony (Germany), whose still cameras would become famous throughout the world under the name “Rollei.” Although the designers Helmut Finke (1957) and Kurt Bode (as of 1960) submitted several sketches for movie cameras, the products were never realized.

Instead, in 1970, Rollei began purchasing from Bauer various Super-8 silent film cameras (the majority came from Malaysia), which had been given a different look by the Stuttgart-based designer Ernst Moeckl. As of 1975, the Rollei movie cameras came from Chinon in Japan; their good looks were ensured by Interform of Wolfsburg. That same year, Rollei man Günter Adamski presented his ingenious “Rollei Duo”: an SLR camera that could run 110-type pocket cartridges for making stills as well as Super-8 film. Once again, that design remained on the shelf.

In 1976, Kurt Bode’s sound film camera, the “Rollei Movie Sound XL 8 Macro,” actually came on the market. Only 2,000 of these cameras were made in Braunschweig; and only 1,800 of the sister model with a 12x macro zoom were placed in stores. The camera was considered to be extremely prone to defects — despite the “Made in Germany” label, once a legendary mark of quality. German manufacturing costs had become too expensive; some components had to be purchased at the lowest possible price in order to withstand competition with the Japanese.