Description

Carl Zeiss founded an optics workshop in Jena, Germany in 1846 to manufacture and sell optical apparatuses. Soon after, the company expanded to producing microscopes. By the 1870s, the company began to manufacture lenses for other instruments, as well as other optical instruments. In 1889, following Carl Zeiss’s death, the company was renamed Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, which managed, among other concerns, the Zeiss Optische Werkstätte (Zeiss Optical Works), and expanded into producing a wide range of scientific and precision instruments. During WWII, the company manufactured equipment for the German armed forces, though their factory was partially destroyed during the war. At the end of the war, Jena was occupied by the United States Army, which relocated some parts of Zeiss Jena to West Germany as the Zeiss Stiftung von Jena. After the establishment of the German Democratic Republic, the original Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung (and the Carl Zeiss Optische Werkstätte) were nationalized as Kombinat VEB Zeiss Jena. The two Zeiss companies in the East and West grew separately. In 1990, after German unification, the two companies were merged into Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH.