Gerhard & Helga Krueger and Leitz: A portrait (7 photos)

Researching the Leitz story, I had occasion to meet Helga and Gerhard Krueger who became great friends.

I adopted them as they me, as my father was absent from my life in some ways.I am a Scot and Belgian on the maternal side, and German on the paternal side…hence the connection.

Germans everywhere seem to identify with each other wherever they hail from.

Gerhard and Helga were part of the second group of specialists to come to Midland from Wetzlar in 1952.

Gerhard was a technician with Leitz as well as an historian of the company here in Canada.

He opened his archive of photos and stories every time we met. Helga always served German treats and coffee.

I was delighted to share these memories of arrival in a new country and eat German treats. Think Viennese tortes and you get the idea of just how great her baking talent was.

I had an opportunity to be German, he had an opportunity to have a son. We talked, we gossiped, we had differing views, but that was the pleasure.

Helga and Gerhard had two beautiful daughters, Elke and Susan. Italy called  

out to Elke and away she went, marrying a Hotelier. Susan stayed close to home, married and had two lovely children.

Both were hotties* when they were young.

However, daughters aside, Gerhard and I had a project to preserve the history of Leitz, the photos, the cameras and all the technical data. Ideally, these stories and artifacts would be housed and displayed for all to see.

Gerhard and Helga loved Midland and wanted to return the generosity they had experienced from Midland’s citizens when they arrived in the early fifties from a war-torn Germany.

New perspectives and views of Midland and its storied past are always exciting as you wonder how the heck so much history can be packed into a town of this size.

What appears on the surface may have so much more beneath as we delve into the lives of our friends and neighbours and discover their  stories.

Both Gerhard and Helga Krueger have passed away. The legacy of his work remains.

We hope the photo archive will be shared with the public one day.

René Hackstetter, September 18, 2021.  

Terminology Guide:  ‘Hotties.’ Old Canadian term for attractive women.  

Limited use today, except by hack journalists online, seeking cheap thrills and a rise out of the reader.