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It’s probable that you’ve never heard of Saarland, a German state that shares boundaries on two sides with France. The changing history over many years between Germany and France concerning who controlled what and who governed whom is long and complicated, eventually culminating, after World War II in 1945, in an economic union agreed with France. That lasted until 1956, when the French agreed to relinquish control and, in 1957, Saarland achieved its present status as a federal state of Germany.
Here in 1948, while under French control, Doctor Wöhler, of whom little is known, set up an optical factory. His products, in an effort to get around the high taxes charged for importing and selling foreign cameras,…