Unfortunately pictures and footnotes fell int the Canal. Some small errors remained in my draft.

Best wishes

B

P.S. If you think that my contribution does not meet your standards, I will not take offence.

Survived in a Gestapo prison in the Netherlands.
Returned to Rathenow, the place of its conception.
Resurrected after a Sunday morning in 1981

Sunday morning, 1981

We lived in the northern part of the Netherlands and visited our parents twice a month in their little reed roofed farmhouse.
Lost your specs? No dad, it was broken last week in a soccer match. I couldn’t find my old glasses I have in reserve.
Well, hum, let me see, he murmured and started rumbling around in one of his desk drawers. With an exultant look in his eyes, he pressed an outworn, pre-war spectacle case in my hands. Maybe something for you? It sounded somewhat sardonically. I opened the case and saw an old-fashioned pair of rimless glasses.

In a rash moment on that day, mother took me aside and said, “He never told me that he still has these glasses”. You know he was in the resistance and, after he was denounced, he fell into the hands of the gestapo. They conducted brutal interrogations. Several times I found his damaged specs between his dirty laundry that I took home after my monthly visit. After each repair I asked him ‘what happened to your glasses again’? Every time he said ‘Oh, it fell from my nose whilst mobbing the floor’. Tell it to the horse marines, I thought and remained silent as it was dangerous to speak too loudly with a guard behind me.

After we got home, I made a meticulous observation of this unique specimen. With a magnifying glass I discovered “Frame made in England’’ on one temple, and on the other “ALGHA 12 krt GR. On the nose bridge “14 krt RG”. One screw had been fastened too tight causing a crack in one of the glass lenses. But, despite its sad condition, these glasses reflected impressive quality and had, in my perception, a noble and learned appearance. It was love at first sight.

Resurrection of an injured framework

Next day I visited the optician in town and asked if he could make new, lenses. He investigated my spectacle case, laid all parts on the counter and his eyes started to twinkle. Oh yes, I can make you plexiglass ones he said. They are less vulnerable as these original glass lenses. After a second glance at my little treasure, he went on saying:
“Sir, you won’t believe it, but the Algha factory in London is still making these gold rolled frames with the machinery that produced this one in the interbellum period, I presume”
I wore father’s specs about two decades after that Sunday visit in 1981. One day, the left nose pad broke off. Metal fatigue after 50 years. My optician said “I told you, Sir. I still can order an identical frame. Three weeks later he called and said that I could fetch my new spectacles. Indeed, one of identical twins.

2001
I defended my PhD-thesis. The PhD ceremony takes place in public, since the university’s foundation in 1614, in the presence of the Doctorate Board. By that time, I still wore my rimless, gold rolled vision aid.
At the start of the ceremony, I missed dad. This painful thought was softened by thinking ‘I look through his glasses’. This invisible support was pulverized by the beadle’s shouting HORA FINITA!

2025
I was looking for an eraser in a wooden box on the bookshelf. My eye fell on my spectacle case and I laid my stylish pair of glasses in front of me. I still loved my aristocratic friend. Many memories emerged. But accidentally, a deviant inscription caught my eye. With my magnifier I read in one arm ‘Saville Row’.
Huh?
No ALGHA?
Reassured by reading on the other arm “Frame made in England’’ and on the nose bridge “14 krt RG”, I started a search for the mysterious relation between the brands of ALGHA and Savile Row.

Two lines intersect at infinity

Saville Row
With the aid of Streetview I crossed into Saville Row, London. Tailors, no spectacle factory. However, the invisible hand led me to an optical factory, which made rolled gold frames in East London (Fish Island). Wikipedia told me that Algha Works London used the relocated machinery of two entire spectacle factories in Rathenow, Germany . athenow?
Rathenow
I searched for an optical industry in Rathenow and landed on the website of the town’s tourist Information. They proudly mentioned “Since 1801 Rathenow is the cradle of optical devices’. The factory ‘Rathenower Optik’ is established on an industrial estate named Heidefeld , along a road “An den Flugzeughallen no. 3” (at hangars no. 3), postcode 14712 Rathenow “(End citation).

Picture 1
Rathenower Optik

HANGARS
After reading the address At hangars no. 3, I suddenly remembered that mother embarrassed as she was sent home without any explanation. Later she heard that all political prisoners had been evacuated by an eviction order. In 1945 father returned home from a concentration camp in Rathenow, where he was forced to rivet aircraft wings of a jet-powered bomber in the hangars of the aircraft manufacturer ARADO.

ARADO
To my surprise the hangars of ARADO were built opposite of the site where nowadays ‘Rathenower Optik’ is settled (see picture 1). A predecessor produced here gold-rolled frames of rimless glasses. Its equipment and its optical technicians were moved to London before the aircraft factory ARADO built here its concentration camp. It was surrounded by electrified barbed wire where convicts were subjected to brutal slave labour, starvation, and severe weather.
Barbed wire was replaced by an ordinary fence, but the hangars remained at the end of the road.

Hangars fronting the road An den Flugzeughallen

My first fragile pair of glasses was made in London and survived this hell on the industrial area ‘Grünauer fenn’ in Rathenow, the place of birth of his ancestors. Thirtyfive years later my friend was resuscitated by the treatment of an optician with devotion to the quality of that tormented frame. Two decades later after the diagnosis ‘irreparable’, my friendship was renewed by his twin brother Saville Row.

Dieter Dangel
Germany

I wonder if there are any photographs of those early years?

I have a few photographs of a staff outing which I would guess was taken in the mid 1930’s. Apart from Great Grandmother Jane Bown, it would be nice to identify the other people in the pictures and exactly when and where the pictures were taken.

If I intended to buy your frames are you able to inform, please, of an Optician(s) who would be able to supply them in the Chesterfield/Sheffield area. Alternatively, can you supply the whole thing ie lenses and frames from my eye-sight prescription?

With best wishes and thanks, Revd John Butterfield.