First appearances can be deceiving: After arriving in Heidenheim, the Franke couple occupied just one room in the grand-looking Deutsche Bank building.
At the end of the Second World War, the American occupation troops advanced eastwards faster than expected and in April 1945 they occupied Thuringia, which was to become part of the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) on the basis of previous agreements. The Americans quickly recognised the potential of Carl Zeiss in Jena and decided without further ado to bring the renowned company’s expertise to their occupation zone before Thuringia was handed over to the Soviet troops.
Even 20 years later, the GDR newspaper “Volkswacht”, published in Gera, criticised under the headline “This is how the Americans robbed Jena” that this action had started the Cold War: The “US imperialists” had abandoned the “common principles of the anti-Hitler coalition” with their unlawful dismantling.
However, in the early summer of 1945, the American occupying troops took advantage of this opportunity and also launched “Operation Paperclip” in Thuringia, which was intended to utilise the knowledge of leading German scientists, engineers and technicians for the USA. The move to transfer the German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun to the USA is still the best known example of this.
But it didn’t stop there for the “Zeissians”. Managers, key employees – including the high-ranking design engineer Prof. Dr Walther Bauersfeld – machines, design plans and patents were moved to Heidenheim in June 1945 under quickly improvised, challenging circumstances. Bauersfeld put his employee Erich Franke on a wish list of additional personnel, which he handed over to the Americans. This is how Franke too arrived in Heidenheim at the end of June – shortly before Thuringia was handed over to the Soviet occupant troops on 8th July 1945 – as part of the “brain drain”. There he was registered as “Completely unknown here”. It is unclear whether he was happy to leave his home town and his own home in a rush. But he didn’t have a choice. The American occupation authorities turned his boss’s wish into an order for evacuation – the GDR later referred to this as “deportation”.
The now 45-year-old didn’t have it easy at first. So-called “refugees” were not very welcome in Swabia. And at first, he and his wife had to make do with a simple one-room flat in the Deutsche Bank building in Heidenheim. But on the plus side, his soon-to-begin “second life” as an entrepreneur would have been unthinkable in the Soviet occupation zone and later the GDR. //
From Jena to Oberkochen: The "brain drain" initially brought Zeiss – and Erich Franke – to Heidenheim in 1945. A production plant was established in Oberkochen in 1946 under the name "Zeiss Opton". Erich Franke also worked here as a "senior engineer" from the beginning of 1946.