Where Evil Reigned: the Bürgerbräukeller and Dachau (Munich) - from the Archives 1979

The Bürgerbräukeller

Bürgerbräukeller (no longer extant)

In 1923, Adolf Hitler and his closest followers and cronies gathered in the Bürgerbräukeller, a huge beer hall in the Haidhausen district of Munich. It had been one of the main gathering places of the Nazi Party in the early 1920s. On 8-9 November of 1923, he and his closest followers marched to the Bürgerbräukeller and declared a putsch, or a coup d'état, to overthrow the Bavarian government. The march to the beer hall was inspired by Mussolini's March to Rome. The police were ready and crushed the putsch, resulting in 19 deaths among the police and putschists. Adolf Hitler was arrested two days later and tried for treason. 

Hitler brilliantly used the trial as a propaganda mouthpiece rather than a defense of his actions. He claimed he was being persecuted, that the judges were corrupt, and that he was a German patriot. The trial thrust this minor figure and his evil Nazi party into the country's consciousness. The rest is gruesome history. Compare with a certain trial that recently ended in Manhattan for another demagog, who claims he is being politically persecuted.

Hitler was convicted to five years in the Landsberg prison, of which he served five months. There, he wrote his infamous political autobiography, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), which later became obligatory reading for Germans. Compare and contrast with "Agenda 47" and the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," both radical blueprints to reshape American government and society. They clearly outline how they plan to impose authoritative government and eliminate many of the checks and balances of our current political system.. 

My friends took me to the  Bürgerbräukeller on Saturday evening, a good way to get a taste of authentic Bavarian beer hall culture. The crowd was mellow, and the obligatory stein of beer was 1-litre. After two of them, I was buzzy. The pretzels and sausages were similarly ponderous. The cig smoke rose to the ceiling, adding to the fog of stale air and aroma of spilled beer. The entertainment early in the evening was very Bavarian. Strong gents tried to pull each other over using rings attached to one finger. They also carried big rocks around the stage using a rope in their teeth. Finally, pretty Bavarian ladies sang ballads and high-stepped.  

The Bürgerbräukeller no longer exists. It was demolished in 1979 as part of a redevelopment program in Munich. I am glad I had the opportunity to see the infamous beer hall.

Dachau

The National Socialist (Nazi) government established the Dachau concentration camp in March 1933 at an old munitions plant in the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich. The camp remained in operation during the entire time of the Nazi government. American troops finally liberated the camp on April 29, 1945. 

 "Arbeit macht frei" ("work sets you free") gate

This infamous gate was stolen in 2014 and recovered near Bergen, Norway, in 2016. The mysterious thieves were never found. This slogan is one of the more cynical and cruel examples of Nazi propaganda. Most prisoners found freedom in death.

Dachau was ominous and horrifying, especially on a gloomy March day. I had never been to a site like this before. How could this happen? A few months before, I read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, possibly the definitive record of the 20th century's darkest years. But this monumental record of the dark years does not give answers.

Long-term readers may remember I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Please click the link to see these pictures. 

This ended my short visit to Munich. Next: the train ride to London. 

Winter Stopover in Munich, Germany - from the Archives 1979

En route to the UK and my eventual flight back to USA, my next stop after Salzburg was Munich, Germany. I had visited Munich many times when I was a child, but do not remember much from these earlier trips. A childhood friend lived in Munich, but his apartment was too cramped to accommodate me, so I booked a modest (= cheap) room in a pension. Winter travel in Europe was very convenient in this way in the old days. 

The Munich Haupbanhof is a bustling transportation center with trains coming and going all day and through much of the night. You can catch a train to almost any city in even the furthest corner of Europe, although connections into the Balkans can be a bit sketchy. The bahnhof is a mixture of add-ons and reconstructions, without a coordinated architectural look. I do not know if the main platforms still look like my 1979 photograph.

If World War II had resulted in a different outcome, we might have seen a totally different station and rail network. Adolf Hitler envisioned an incredibly ambitious Breitspurbahn (broad-gauge railway) network using 3,000 mm (9 ft 10⅛ in) track. The system would connect the far reaches of the Reich, with lines leading to India (!), Baku (= oil), and even to Fairbanks. The railroad stations for these new super trains would be enormous ornate domed buildings, with gigantism being the overall motif, similar to the plans to rebuild Berlin. The double decker rail cars would be equipped with lounges, a cinema, and luxury restaurants (similar to ocean liners). Railroad engineers and economists knew the plan was utterly hopeless, but nevertheless, some 200 engineers and officials worked on plans during the war. They were the lucky ones, because this job kept them out of the Eastern Front. 

View from the Rathaus of the Frauenkirche (Nikkor 28mm ƒ/3.5 lens with orange filter)

Marienplatz

Whenever I visit an unfamiliar city, I try to find a high tower or hill from which to see the setting. Marienplatz is the historic center of Munich, a gathering place since Henry the Lion founded the city in 1158. I love visiting cities where history engulfs you. Most tourists come to Marienplatz when they first arrive.

Marienplatz

Chilling out at the Rathaus

A nice day in the sun. As I recall, old ladies in Germany always wore thick heavy coats, even on comfortable days with sun.

Unhappy Greeks wondering what happened to their bodies

Leo von Klenze (1784–1864), architect to the court of Ludwig I, built the Munich Glyptothek. Unhappy Greek, Roman and Etruscan heads and bodies hang around. Will these guys will ever return to their original homes? Are their bodies still back home?

Chinesischer Turm at the Englischer Garten. 1-litre beer steins?

Angel of Peace (Friedensengel)

One could spend weeks in Munich taking in the art, architecture, and culture. Well, that applies to most of Europe. Definitely go there - watch, absorb, eat, enjoy, live life.

To be continued next week.

Winter Stopover in Salzburg - from the Archives 1979

Introduction

In March of 1979, I took the train across Europe en route back to USA. I had spent seven months in Greece and the Middle East, but reluctantly had to return home to find a job (one of those irritating life events). My first stop was Vienna, which I described in a 2020 post (please click the link). Salzburg was my next stop. My grandparents took me there in the 1950s or 1960s, but I cannot remember any details.

The Urban Decay reader may wonder why I bothered to revive 45-year-old negatives. They are casual tourist snapshots. Online, one can find a million (billion?) snapshots of Salzburg. Am I attempting a nostalgia flashback to another era, when I was young and energetic? I was exploring the world around me (as I still am despite my dotage). Was I was beginning to form a photographic technique or vision? Regardless, please let me share these pictures from a long-ago trip with you Urban Decay readers. But be forewarned, there is no urban decay in this series.  

An American in Paris Salzburg. Note the giant tie.

Salzburg

Winter in Salzburg is quiet and peaceful (or at least it was in 1979). There were few tourists, and the tourist office found me a room in a modest pension (with delicious Frühstück, of course!). Being winter, some stores were closed, and fountains were protected with wood covers. I had no specific itinerary, so I walked to the castle and wandered the streets.

Road to the Hohensalzburg Fortress (11th century)

Hohensalzburg Fortress (Tri-X film, 28mm ƒ/3.5 Nikkor lens)

Mozart's Geburtshaus, No. 9 Getreidegasse

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthplace is a major tourist attraction. If you are a Mozart fan, some of the best recordings are on the Complete Mozart Edition, a 180 compact disk (CD) collection released by Philips Classics Records in 1990–1991. These amazing CDs are cheap on eBay.

Philips Classic Records Complete Mozart albums (compact disk)

The era of big glasses

Berchtesgaden

Alter Friedhof (old cemetery), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria

I took a one-day outing to Bavaria. I had met an American teacher with a class, and she generously invited me to join the group to see the salt mines and the town of Berchtesgaden. We descended deep into the mines by riding wood sleds down a rail. I developed a splitting headache from the air pressure. The miners used to flood caverns and then pump the brine to the surface. After we came up to the surface, we wandered around the picturesque town of Berchtesgaden. The class was very generous to invite me. 

This ended my too-short stopover in the Salzburg area. The next morning, I boarded the train and headed to Munich.

These photographs are from Kodak Tri-X 400 film from my Nikkormat FTn camera. This was a heavy beast for travel, but that is what I had, and I was stronger then. Tri-X was always a reliable travel film with plenty of exposure latitude. In that era, train stations did not have X-ray machines for your carry-on bags. I scanned the film with my new/old Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 film scanner, operated by Nikon Scan 4.03 software. The film has numerous scratches and defects, many of which I cleaned with the heal tool in Photoshop CS6. 

1950s Excellence: the Leitz 50mm ƒ/2.0 Type 2 Summicron-DR lens

Leitz 50mm ƒ/2.0 dual range Summicron lens in original box. 

Introduction 

Leica's 50mm Summicron lenses have been famous for optical and mechanical excellence for over 60 years. Leica's term Summicron means a lens with maximum aperture of ƒ/2.0. They have been improved over the decades and are still in production - how many other consumer products have lasted over a half century? Even more amazing, a new lens will fit on a 50-year-old Leica M body, or a 60-year-old lens will work on a brand new film or digital body. When you consider the longevity, Leica lenses are reasonable price, despite the hatred (= envy) from many modern digital users.

A convenient summary with photographs of the different versions is on Ken Rockwell's site.

5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens in extended (ready to photograph) position

Summitar

Ernst Leitz produced the predecessor lens, the 5cm Summitar, from 1939 to 1953, with 170,761 units total. War-time lenses were uncoated, but from 1946 on, they were anti-reflection coated. Eastman Kodak and Zeiss had coated optics for military use during World War II, but coating all air-glass surfaces on general civilian optics became widespread only after the war. The Summitar had a complicated design of 7 elements in 4 groups. Human computers using mechanical calculators and trigonometry tables must have made a heroic effort to compute the ray paths. The Summitar's central sharpness is superb, but the edges fall off and there is field curvature. This can be used creatively, and regardless, "sharpness" is not normally the factor that makes a photograph successful. For examples, please look at some of my 2017 Nepal articles. In 1953, the Summitar lens cost $158 in USA.

Summicron Type 1

E. Leitz introduced the first Summicron, the Type 1, in 1952. It was an update of the Summitar, also mounted in a collapsible barrel. This lens was also manually computed, although surely the workers used electrical tabulating machines. The first electronic computers after World War II were used for ballistics analysis, atomic weapons research, rocket trajectories, and military optics. The 1953 USA cost for the Summicron was $183.

A note on collapsible lenses: When the E. Leitz company introduced its first camera in 1923, it used perforated cine film but doubled the frame size to 24×36 mm. All other cameras then used much larger roll film or individual sheet film. So the new small image surface became known as miniature format. The cameras were intended for travel or adventures like mountain climbing. Therefore, the manufacturers wanted to make the cameras compact and portable. One way to do that was to build a lens in a barrel that could collapse into the body. As the years went by, cameras grew larger and heavier (like automobiles or, most grotesquely, American SUVs). The Zeiss Contarex of 1960 had grown to 910 grams for just the body. The Nikon F with its metering head was a big package, as well. And today, the digital single lens reflex (DSLR) in "full frame" size is a bulbous thing graced with a protruding penile lens that points at its subject like a cannon. Just tell DSLR users that they really have the miniature format.

1963 Type 2 Summicron lens with single focus range.

Summicron Type 2

E. Leitz introduced their Type 2 Summicron in 1956. It was in production until 1968. To improve the precision of the glass alignment, Leitz mounted Type 2 optics in a rigid barrel. It was a masterpiece of mechanical precision and elegance, but the construction of brushed chrome over brass made it heavy. This lens was also hand computed.

Leitz began computer-aided lens computations after about 1960 at their factory in Midland, Ontario, Canada, under the guidance of Dr. Walter Mandler (from Erwin Puts). It is an interesting history of international competition about this time. Japanese optical companies such as Canon, Nikon, and Topcon were also exploring new lens designs with the aide of early computers. They were able to market lenses with almost as refined optical characteristics as Leica but at lower price. The brilliance of the Japanese companies was to bring superb optics to a wide audience at reasonable price.

Leitz made two versions of the Type 2 lens. One had a single focus range covering 1m to infinity. The photograph above shows a 1963 lens that I bought from a friend in town. It was available in M-mount  (63,055 units) as well as the 39mm thread mount (1160 units; now a rare collector item).

1967 Dual range Summicron without goggles.

Dual range Summicron with goggles attached on the flat plate. The lens has been extended to its closest focus distance.

The second version had a dual focus range and is known as the DR. The normal range was 1.0 m to infinity. But if you wanted to focus on a closer object, you slid a spectacle viewfinder attachment onto a flat plate on the top of the lens. The goggles depressed a button, which let the lens focus from 0.48 to 0.88 m. The goggles correct the parallax of the rangefinder view. It was a clever way to let a rangefinder camera focus more closely than the normal 0.8 or 1.0 meter. A reflex camera does not have these limitations, but in the 1950s, most miniature camera photographers were still using rangefinders. Total production was 55,145 units.

Note: the goggle units varied slightly in design over the production period. You must have the correct unit for your lens for it to mount and focus correctly.

My stepdad bought the DR in the pictures above in 1966 or 1967. This lens and M2 camera took family pictures in Greece and traveled to Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and North America. Now it photographs urban decay in Mississippi and Louisiana. This one has pristine coating.

I could not find a complete Leica price booklet from the 1960s, but I found a few prices in US $ for M2 body and lenses:

• M2 w/50mm ƒ/2 rigid Summicron 423.00
• M2 w/50mm ƒ/2 DR Summicron 465.00

Optical unit and focus mount of Summicon-DR lens. Serial numbers must match.

Special note: the optical unit can be unscrewed from the focus unit. If you buy a used DR lens, the serial numbers must match. Do not accept an unmatched lens. 

I also have a Type 4 50mm Summicron from 1984 or 1985 production. I will write about it in a future article. It is mounted in a lighter weight black alloy barrel as opposed to the gorgeous brushed chrome of my DR unit.

Examples with Kodak BW400CN film

On a recent day trip through rural Mississippi south of I-20, I grabbed a roll of Kodak BW400CN. I have had mixed results with this film in the past. Sometimes it looks muddy, but sometimes I like the tonality. Could there be differences in the C-41 chemistry? Regardless, here are a few samples from my Leica M2 and the 50mm Summicron-DR. I was surprised how the film renders green as quite light, but only for long exposures in settings such as dense underbrush. I do not recall seeing this before. The BW is pretty grainy, but I like the effect. (Click any picture to enlarge it.)

Abandoned farm house, Rte 18 in Brandon, Mississippi.

Remains of a gasoline station, Raleigh (with polarizer filter).

Big Smittys, MS Hwy 149, Mendenhall. This is a former Pan-Am filling station. 

Main Street, Mendenhall. Polarizer used to darken sky.

Shop on MS 28 east of Georgetown.

Historic Crossroads Store on Old Port Gibson Road, Reganton.

References

Laney, D. 1994. Leica Camera and Lens Pocket Book, 6th Edition revised and updated, Hove Collectors' Books, East Sussux, UK, 142 p.

Other

An interesting 2007 article about Leica cameras is in The New Yorker, September 24, 2007 issue, Candid Camera, The cult of Leica.

Update Dec. 2020: Here are silos in Delta, Louisiana, taken with long-expired GAF Versapan film. Click to enlarge.

Silos, Levee Road, Delta, Louisiana (GAF Versapan film, Summicron-DR lens, orange filter)

Good Things in Small Packages: Leica IIIC Camera

My Leica IIIC with its original 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens

English language instruction manual

At the Parthenon, Athens, Greece, 1953. Photograph on Kodachrome film with this Leica IIIC.

Background

This is my Leica IIIC rangefinder camera made in Wetzlar, West Germany. It uses the standard 35mm perforated film with frame size of 24 × 36mm. My dad bought this IIIC in 1949 when he worked for the US Navy on Guam. It came with a 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens. He had owned an American-made Perfex 35mm camera during the war years but had wanted a Leica for a long time. During World War II, a few Leicas were exported to the Allies via Sweden, but they were reserved for special uses (spies or well-placed generals?).

Advertisement from Olden Camera & Lens Co., New York, January 1947. Note Leica IIIB and Summitar cost  $385.00, a major investment in the late-1940s.

Modern Photography advertisement, September 1953. The IIIF was the contemporary model, selling for $368 with the Summitar lens. The superior Summicron lens cost $25 more. (Click to enlarge picture)

After the war, one of the ways a war-ravaged Germany began to rebuild its economy was to export precision optical equipment, such as the famous Leica cameras. Leica's advertising emphasized excellence and sophistication. My dad took the opportunity of low prices at the post exchange on Guam to buy this body and lens. As I recall, he said they cost $150. He used this little Leica for many years, taking family photographs when we lived in Greece and southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. I used it in the 1970s and 1980s and still do.

Operation

On modern standards, this camera is a bit fiddly to use. First the viewfinder has two windows. The way I use it is to first look through the right finder, which shows the complete scene covered by the 50mm lens. If I like the scene, I shift my eye to the left window and focus on the object that is most important. By the way, it is a remarkably accurate focus arrangement considering the short base length. Then I shift back to the right window, do the final framing, and take the picture. Really, it is easier and faster in practice than to describe in text.

With permission from The Online Darkroom.

Instructions for trimming film before loading

Second, the film needs to be trimmed with scissors to have a long tongue before you insert it in the take-up spool. Then you slide both the 35mm cartridge and take-up spool into the body from the bottom. Leica once sold a trimming guide, but you do not need it. Just use your Swiss Army knife to trim about 8 or 10 cm from the tongue, and it will work. Once loaded, turn the rewind knob gently to remove slack. Then, when you advance the film, make sure the rewind knob is turning in the opposite direction to be certain that the film is truly advancing. Again, it is easier to do than to describe. I carry a spare take-up spool with me, but I have never lost one.

As the photographs show, the camera has almost watchmaker precision in the fittings. The chrome on mine is pitted because in the early post-war era, chromium was hard to buy, and many German cameras had poor plating.

Lenses and filters

From Popular Photography, approx. 1950

With permission from The Online Darkroom.

Leica marketed lenses ranging from 21 to 400 mm, all the best quality available at the time. Oddly, my father never bought any more lenses.

My dad's IIIC came with a 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens (the prestige lens as opposed to the less expensive 5cm ƒ/3.5 Elmar). Mine is the Type 1 version with 10 aperture blades. The Summitar was in production from 1939 to 1953. It was designed by E. Leitz's genius lens designer, Max Berek, in 1937. The war-time production lenses were uncoated, but Leitz applied anti-reflection coating from 1946 on. The construction was a complicated design of 7 elements in 4 groups. It must have taken a heroic effort to compute the ray paths by human computers using mechanical calculators and trigonometry tables. The central sharpness is superb, but the edges fall off, and there is distinct field curvature. This can be used creatively, and regardless, "sharpness" is not normally the factor that makes a photograph successful.

A few years ago, Sherry Krauter in New York cleaned and checked the Summitar lens for me. Mine is pristine and never suffered the scratches in the soft coating that plague so many 1940s lenses (old-time photographers cleaned their lenses with their neckties).

These older Leica bodies have a screw mount for the lenses. The thread is 39mm × 26 turns-per-inch or threads-per-inch (tpi). This was a Whitworth threading standard, which was common in microscope manufacture in the early 20th century. German, English, and Japanese companies made hundreds of different lenses for this 39mm mount. Focal lengths other than 50mm require an auxiliary viewfinder to show the correct frame. Soviet companies made lenses for 39 × 1mm, but this was close enough to usually fit on the Leitz bodies. The Japanese company, Canon, continued to make superb thread-mount lenses up through the 1970s, when they finally discontinued their excellent thread-mount rangefinder S7 cameras. Note that this is a different 39mm than the 39 × 0.75 thread used for large-format Copal 1 and many other shutters. And it is different than the 39F pitch (39 × 0.5) used for 39mm filters that screw into the front of many Leica lenses. Confusing? Yes, of course!

The shutter in my IIIC body had been troublesome for over a decade, but Don Goldberg (known as DAG) in Wisconsin did a fantastic job overhauling it mid-2017. This is the main roller, on which Mr. Goldberg marked the areas that were badly worn. He replaced it with a new-old-stock main roller, the genuine Leica part. For how many other consumer products that are seven decades old can you still get factory replacement parts (possibly some fine watches or Rolls Royce motorcars?)?

The Summitar lens requires filters with a unique 36mm tapered thread. These were known as Type L filters (see Appendix 1 below). When I used filters on my Nepal trip, I had Leitz Series VI filters and a Tiffen 606 retaining ring (see Appendix 2). It is a bit clumsy but manageable, and the series filters will fit other lenses with the appropriate adapter rings. A polarizer is the most clumsy, but Leica made a brilliant fold-out polarizer just for this task (model 13352). I finally bought genuine Summitar yellow, dark yellow, and green filters, which are faster to handle than the series filters and do not block as much of the view through the viewfinder.

As for a hood, the rectangle folding unit known as a SOOPD fits over type L filters and causes minimal blocking of the view through the viewfinders. 

The Summitar lens is a bit quirky. My example (and maybe all of them?) has a lot of field curvature, so the edges of a flat object will be fuzzy. But a typical scene with the subject near the center has smooth out of focus area away from the central subject. 

Areas outside the zone of focus look smooth and innocuous. This out-of-focus appearance is known as bokeh. Thirty years ago, almost no one thought about it, but now, "photographers" are obsessed with the topic (even though most of them just consider anything out of focus to be bokeh). The newer Type 2 and Type 4 50mm ƒ/2.0 Summicron lenses for my Leica M2 body are "better", but I rather like the old Summitar. It feels good to have my dad's camera in operation again. He would be pleased.

Examples

Village Elders, Siran Danda, Gorkha region, Nepal.

School girls, Dhulikhel, east of Kathmandu.

Young ladies of Nepani, Gorkha District, Nepal.

For a trip to Nepal in October of 2017, I decided to use this little IIIC with black and white film and skip the obligatory digital imaging device entirely. It was a great success. Many Nepalis were amazed that I was using a mechanical camera almost 70 years old. It was a tension-breaker to let people look through the viewfinder, but I had to explain that there was no LCD screen for them to see the results. Surprisingly, some of the camera stores in the Thamel area (the main tourist zone) of Kathmandu still stock fresh Ilford and Fuji film in 35mm size. But you probably could not find any 120 or large format film. These examples are on TMax 100 film, developed by Praus Productions in Rochester, New York. I had only used TMax 100 once before and I'm impressed by the fine grain. Nice stuff. To measure exposure, I used a Gossen Luna Pro Digital meter, usually in reflected mode but sometimes in incident mode.

Cooking pots at Thubten Choling Monastery, Solu Khumbu region.

Tools at Serlo Monastery, Solu Khumbu region.

Hanging around in Kathmandu. Note: most mannequins in Nepal are European ladies (but may be made in India??).

Nepal is a fabulous photographic destination. The people are friendly and welcoming. The country is developing and changing quickly. Go soon to see remnants of an earlier era before they are torn up and replaced with the new commercial world. The same warning applies to Cuba: Go before the developers pillage and ruin it, especially if American developers ever move in.

Summary

A few reasons to buy one of these ltm Leicas:

1. As time goes on, the remaining stock of these thread mount Leicas will be more and more beat up and will diminish in total number.

2. They will be repairable in the future.

3. They don't make them like this any more. Definitely not!

4. They will be usable as long as 35mm perforated film is made and sold.

5. You will enjoy occasionally using one as a substitute for a more sophisticated newer 35mm camera or digital unit.

6. These ltm Leicas are compact and great travel cameras, especially with the collapsible Elmar lens.

7. They are technologically elegant.

8. People stop to admire it when you are using a ltm Leica. It can be an ice-breaker.

9. It is definitely not a spray and pray photon capture device: you need to think with one of them and know a bit about what you are doing (i.e., you can't just push a button).

10. They are unlikely to depreciate.

11. Thread-mount lenses can be used on modern digital cameras.

12 The lenses are appreciating in price, especially for clean examples without fungus, scratches, or haze.

These little Leica thread-mount cameras are still available at reasonable acceptable prices. They are fun to use and have a precision feel that most modern cameras do not replicate (other than Leica M film bodies, which, as of 2022, are still in production). Just go buy one and return to the basics of photography. I know your creativity will blossom.

Other articles

For an earlier article about how I have used Leica cameras to record urban decay, click this link. 

Mike Johnston, former editor of Camera & Darkroom magazine and now author of The Online Photographer, wrote an excellent article in 1992 about Leicaphilia. He also wrote about The Leica as a Teacher. "A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist."

35MMC has a useful article titled 7 Reasons You Should Own a Thread Mount Leica. I agree with the author that these cameras slow you down and make you think. You just can't spray and pray and then doodle around with Lightroom for weeks culling files, doing the "workflow," and hoping that you might have "shot" a meaningful photograph. Film does not work that way.

Johnny Martyr wrote a detailed review of the Leica IIIC, titled Tempered Indulgence. Also, check his review of the Summitar lens.

Phoblogger has an interesting interview with the manager of Richard Photo Lab (Los Angeles, California) about how film most definitely is not dead and is reviving among many age and skill groups.

Andrew Yue wrote a nice introduction to the Leica thread-mount cameras titled, "- Leica Screw Mount Cameras - the 1930's through the 1950's -"

Update 2019

I bought a Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 ltm lens and have had very nice results with it.  Click the link to see examples. I also have a 50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens from the Soviet Union.

 

Appendix 1, Summitar Filters

The Leitz Summitar used a unique tapered 36mm filter thread. As far as I know, only Leitz and Walz offered this size. This note from the Leica Users Group (LUG) by Marc James Small describes the Leitz filters:

In any event, here is the best listing I can produce for the Summitar filters.  These were known at Wetzlar as L filters (by comparison, the E39 range were O filters). 

Very Light Yellow       GBOOM   13080

Light Yellow            GBWOO   13085

Medium Yellow   GCOOL

Green #1                GEYOO

Green #2                GCYOO   13095

Graduated Yellow        GHOOF   13105

Graduated Green GILOO

Orange          GDOOK   13100

Light Red/IR            GECOO   13115

Medium Red/IR   GFEOO   13120

Dark Red/IR             GFOOH   13125

Blue                    RQPOO   13097

UVa                     GHIOO   13130

Blank Filter Holder     FOOXC

Haze                    FIHAZ

Skylight                GCSKY   13150

Type F          FKDSUM  13137

Type FP         FPKSUM  13147

Type A          FIDAY           13135

Photoflood              FIFLO           13140

Flash Conversion        GCHEO   13145

Swing-Out Polarizer     FISUM           13395

Rotating Polarizer      POORE   13355

Filters which only have a catalogue code-word and not a catalogue number did not survive into production to 1954, the first year for the universal use of the numbers.  Many of the 

Summitar filters had dropped out of the catalogues by 1960 and all were gone from the Leitz catalogue by 1962.

If you are a Summitar user, buy the genuine filters when you see examples in good condition. 

Appendix 2, Series Filters

The most comprehensive description of series filters and the various adapter rings made for hundreds of lenses is from photographer Robert Allen Kautz in Vermont. 

• Summitar adapter: Tiffen model 606
• Jupiter-8 lens (40.5mm thread): Tiffen 602 

40.5 mm was common on many German lenses in the mid-1950s, and you can find 40.5mm filters that screw into the lens directly. Beware that Tiffen, Ednalite, and Enteco adapter numbers are different (Confusing? Of course!).