Voigtlander Bergheil1923

History

By the early 1920s Voigtlander had more than a century and a half of optical manufacturing history behind it -- the company was founded in Vienna in 1756 and had moved to Brunswick, Germany in 1849. The Bergheil appeared during the Weimar Republic period, a time of significant cultural investment in outdoor pursuits including hiking, climbing, and nature photography. The name directly addressed the mountain enthusiast market.

The Bergheil's aluminum construction was a deliberate premium differentiator. Most competitors in 1923 used heavier steel or die-cast zinc alloys. Aluminum machining at the required tolerances was more expensive, and the Bergheil was priced accordingly. The camera competed at the top end of the portable plate-folder market against products from Contessa-Nettel (which merged into Zeiss Ikon in 1926) and later Linhof.

The Bergheil remained in production into the 1930s as the folding plate camera market gradually ceded ground to roll-film designs. The Voigtlander Bessa, introduced in 1929 for 120 roll film, represented the direction the market was moving, and the Bergheil's plate-focused design eventually became a niche product for photographers committed to large negatives. By the late 1930s, 35mm was firmly established for travel photography and the Bergheil's position was fully overtaken.

Why It Matters

The Bergheil occupies an interesting position in the history of portable camera design: it demonstrates that manufacturers were aware of the weight problem with plate cameras and were actively engineering against it before the Leica I (1925) reframed the question entirely. The aluminum body solution is a pragmatic engineering response to a real user demand -- photographers who wanted large negatives in a camera they could carry on a mountain.

The Heliar lens fitted to premium Bergheil examples is regarded as one of the finest pre-war German lenses available to film photographers today. Its rendering -- particularly the way it handles out-of-focus areas at moderate apertures -- has been described by collectors and photographers as distinctly three-dimensional compared to simpler four-element designs. Cosina's Voigtlander brand revived the Heliar name in the 1990s with modern lenses that explicitly reference the formula, underscoring the original's lasting influence.

For collectors, the Bergheil Deluxe variant (if encountered) represents the highest trim level, sometimes fitted with an olive-green or tan leatherette covering instead of the standard black, and associated with limited-production export or gift sets.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Voigtlander Bergheil -- primary reference for production history and variant identification