18 Dec
2011
18 Dec
'11
6:07 p.m.
On 19 Dec 2011 at 2:30, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, according to their website, only 30% of their
revenue is from
export, so they mostly sell to customers in germany (and, at a guess,
probably mostly industrial customers at that). Founded in 1947 in what
was then east germany, I would not be surprised if a significant
fraction of their foreign customers was to be found toward the east
(eastern europe and russia).
In general, the US shunned a lot of DDR trade, but there were
exceptions. Photo equipment, particularly lenses and Exakta cameras
from the 1960s were readily available as well as
musical instruments
(for example, B&S tubas from that time still have a
legendary
reputation). I think a lot of the products made in the DDR using
1930's and 1940's designs and manufacturing techniques were valued
quite highly. (The same might be said of post-1945 Sudeten-based
Czech goods--for decades, they went on using the old German designs
and techniques while the rest of the world moved on.
I was thinking about the amount of Telefunken, Grundig, Siemens and
Bosch gear that I've seen over the years and never having seen a
Prolyt capacitor. I suspect that before 1990, very few GDR firms
used DDR components.
--Chuck