Based in Görlitz, a designation that often appears on their lenses, the “Optisch-Mechanische Industrie-Anstalt Hugo Meyer & Co.” was founded in 1896 by the optician Hugo Meyer and the merchant Heinrich Schätze. The maker, in co-operation with Paul Rudolph, was an early pioneer (from 1918) of Plasmat lens manufacture, and rapidly expanded between 1920-1942, largely as a result of their OEM collaboration with Ihagee.
In 1936, the company was renamed “Optische und Feinmechanische Werke Hugo Meyer & Co” and is reported to have produced approximately 100,000 lenses a year.
The company was an early manufacturer of projection lenses, and also produced enlarger lenses – labelled Helioplan – that were redeployments of their large format lenses. In 1946, following the end of WWII, the company was reformed as “VEB Optisch-Feinmechanische Werke Görlitz’ and commenced production of the excellent six-element Doppel-Anastigmat macro lenses and Trioplan triplets for which it found renown. From 1952, magnesium fluoride coating was introduced.
In 1959, Dresden’s optical manufacturers were combined under the Socialist regime into one operation called VEB Pentacon. In 1968 Meyer was merged with this combine and by 1970/71 factory output was all labeled accordingly. During the mid-1980’s Pentacon was absorbed into VEB Carl Zeiss Jena and withered as an independent entity. The brand briefly stuttered back into life after the reunification of Germany in 1989, but the relaunch of “Feinoptisches Werk Görlitz GmbH” producing lenses marked ‘Meyer-Optik’ was short-lived and the company was wound up in 1991.
Two decades later the Meyer name rose and fell once more: in 2014, net SE, working with the brand manager Globell B.V., exhibited new lenses branded ‘Meyer-Optik-Görlitz’ at Photokina and began delivering lenses in December of the same year – mainly driven by a Kickstarter campaign capitalising on demand for the ‘bubble bokeh’ rendition of Meyer’s Trioplan. A new 50mm f2.9 lens resulted, and a 100mm version was planned. However, the market simply wasn’t large enough and the company hadn’t fully committed to the quality control needed to justify a relatively high price for a niche triplet lens. It also subsequently emerged that net SE had been rebranding Chinese lenses while marketing them as German-made. The owners filed for bankruptcy in 2016, leaving Kickstarter backers high and dry.
In 2018, OPC Europe acquired the rights to the Meyer-Optik name and its design assets and redeployed the trading name ‘Meyer Optik Görlitz’ and from 2020 OPC fully engaged with production of updated versions of classic Meyer lenses – included Biotar, Primotar and Trioplan. At the time of writing (2024), the production of German-made Meyer lenses can trace its lineage continually (if not continuously) across 125 years.
Meyer-Optik Serial Numbers
Hartmut Thiele, Patrice Herve-Pont and the members of the ‘MF Lenses’ forum have all attempted compilation of the Meyer serial number sequence. With a few notable exceptions, there’s sufficiently good correlation between the three sequences to make the following compilation without significant interpolation:
| Date or Range | Early Serial | Late Serial |
| 1900 | 2,136 | |
| 1902-1903 | 8,000 | |
| 1905 | 14,227 | |
| 1907-1908 | 35,000 | |
| 1910 | 53,203 | |
| 1912-1913 | 75,000 | |
| 1915 | 91,369 | |
| 1917-1918 | 120,000 | |
| 1920 | 155,903 | |
| 1922-1923 | 200,000 | |
| 1925 | 235,265 | |
| 1927-1928 | 275,000 | |
| 1930 | 336,157 | 500,000 |
| 1931 | 550,000 | |
| 1932 | 600,000 | |
| 1933 | 650,000 | |
| 1934 | 700,000 | |
| 1935 | 660,007 | 700,000 |
| 1936 | 800,000 | |
| 1937 | 850,000 | |
| 1938 | 900,000 | |
| 1939-1940 | 951,011 | 1,000,000 |
| Wartime production (1939-1945) was largely given over to telescopes and non-commercial military optics | ||
| 1947 | 1,051,000 | |
| 1948 | 1,068,113 | |
| 1950-1951 | 1,104,132 | 1,200,000 |
| 1954-1955 | 1,442,000 | 1,600,000 |
| 1956 | 1,700,000 | 1,900,000 |
| 1957 | 2,000,000 | 2,200,000 |
| 1958 | 2,200,000 | 2,400,000 |
| 1959 | 2,400,000 | 2,600,000 |
| 1960 | 2,600,000 | 2,800,000 |
| 1961 | 2,800,000 | 3,000,000 |
| 1962 | 3,000,000 | 3,100,000 |
| 1963 | 3,150,000 | 3,350,000 |
| 1964 | 3,350,000 | 3,500,000 |
| 1965 | 3,500,000 | 3,786,130 |
| 1967 | 4,000,000 | |
| 1968 | 4,250,000 | |
| 1969 | 4,500,000 | |
| 1970-1972 | 5,000,000 | 6,064,888 |
Meyer-Optik Lens Markings
It was customary in the post-war period for DDR products destined for export to be marked with quality seals. Meyer lenses are observed with the numeral one in a triangle, or a superimposed ‘Q1’. Beyond pinpointing a production date between 1950 and 1960, the signs offer little helpful meaning. Early coated lenses (1952-c.1956) are marked with the letter ‘V’ for ‘Vergütet’ (ie: #1,913,653). As coating became ubiquitous the designation was dropped.
Meyer-Optik / Pentacon AV Slide Projector Lenses
Meyer’s Diaplan slide projector lenses appear in the early 1950s. They were standard fitment on Pentacon’s Aspectar slide projectors (N24, J24 and – later – 150A). In 1959 the f2.8 Diaplan triplets were recomputed and launched with the Aspectomat 300 projector. Examples from the early 1960s were metal barreled and serialled – a custom that seems to have fallen by the wayside in c.1965 when production switched to a plastic threaded barrel. A catalogue of 1964 shows metal-bodied Diaplans retaining engraved serial numbers on either the fascia or outer barrel in focal lengths of 60mm, 80mm and 100mm with an f2.8 aperture, and 80mm, 100mm and 140mm in f3.5.
From approximately 1970, Aspectar projectors were fitted with a suspiciously identical-looking triplet lens branded ‘Pentacon-AV’ and featured the Pentacon logo. Somewhat later (perhaps c.1974) the logo was dropped in favour of the declaration ‘Made in G.D.R’. Most late period lenses (c.1974-1985) were multicoated.
As a footnote to the history of ‘Diaplan’: after it fell out of usage as a descriptor of Meyer’s projection lenses, it was taken up by Leitz in the early 1985 as a brand name for Leitz microscopes. The Manufoc Mark 1 enlarger was also fitted with a Diaplan 55mm f4.5 lens.