HE HISTORY of Agfa goes back to 1867 with the formation of a dyestuffs chemical company Aktien Gesellschaft für Analin-Fabrikation, or AGFA for short. In 1925, the company decided it wanted to get into camera making, and bought the lens and camera maker A. Heinrich Rietzschell GmbH Optische Fabrik in Munich, a well respected firm that had been making lenses and cameras for more than 30 years. For a short time, Agfa kept the name Rietzschell going, particularly on lenses, because of their good reputation, but it was soon dropped and both lenses and cameras became Agfa.
     
      In 1928, Agfa's subsidiary in the US joined with Ansco to form Agfa-Ansco, and some Agfa cameras built in Germany can be found in the US under the Agfa-Ansco, Ansco, and later GAF names. During the 1930s Agfa expanded in Germany with film factories in Leverkusen and Wolfen, but after world war II the Wolfen factory found itself behind the iron curtain in the DDR and changed its name to Orwo, short for ORiginal WOlfen. Its main market was in eastern Europe, but with a fall off in film sales generally and the opening up of east European markets to worldwide manufactuers its sales fell below the economic figure and the company went bankrupt. It was bought out, and is making film again but only X-ray and other industrial film and not, unfortunately, for cameras.
     
      In Western Germany, Agfa was soon back in production after the war with two companies, Agfa AG fur Photofabrikation, making film in Leverkusen, and Agfa Kamerawerk AG at the original plant in Munich. Later, these were merged to become just Agfa AG which acquired the film maker Perutz and various other companies before merging with Gevaert of Belgium to become Agfa-Gevaert..
     
      The latest change is a split-off, a management buy-out, whereby a new independent company, AgfaPhoto, has bought the consumer imaging division of Agfa-Gevaert and says it will take over the manufacture of film and photographic paper, still using the Agfa name, leaving Agfa-Gevaert to concentrate on other fields. Agfa film cameras aren't made any more, but there are new Agfa digital cameras though at the moment I'm not sure if Agfa-Gevaert or AgfaPhoto controls the manufacture and marketing. My interest is in the film cameras.