Enna Werk was a small German optical company founded in 1920 by Alfred Neumann and located in Munich. There seem to be two stories regarding its name: (i) Enna is the founder’s daughter’s name reversed, or (ii) Enna is derived from the reversed initials “N.A.”, of its founder (pronounced Enna). During WWII, the company supplied lenses for the German military. In 1945 the plant was destroyed by allied air raids and was relocated to Ebersberg, near Munich. After the death of Neumann, the running of the company was taken over by his son-in-law, Dr. Werner Appelt and renamed “Enna-Werk Optische Anstalt Dr. Appelt K.G.”. By 1948 the plant at Konradinstraße in Munich was rebuilt.
Circa 1950 the company started making lenses under its own name – prior to this the company only manufactured lenses for other companies, including Alpa, Balda, Braun, Corfield, Edixa (Wirgin), and Ihagee. In 1952 it started producing lenses for interchangeable rangefinder cameras. This was followed in 1953 by the production of SLR lenses with a focal length range between 24 and 600 mm. By 1964 Enna had produced 4 million lenses. The primary lens designer was Dr. Siegfried Schäfer and some of his designs are based on drafts by Ludwig Bertele, designer of the famous Sonnar. They made lenses in various mounts including M42, M39, and Exakta.
The first interchangeable SLR lens was the 35mm wide-angle Lithagon f/4.5 (1953), followed soon afterwards by f/3.5 and f/2.8 and even f/2.5 versions (1956). A Lithagon with a 28mm focal length, the Ultra-Lithagon 28mm f/3.5 was unrivalled at the time (1955). A very fast Ennalyt 85mm f/1.5 appeared in 1954, followed a year later by a telephoto, the Tele-Ennalyt 135mm f/3.5. Enna had a number of milestones, which included the world’s fastest wide-angle lens, the 9-element Super-Lithagon 35mm f/1.9 in 1958, and the worlds first telephoto zoom lens, the Enna Tele-Zoom 85-250mm f/4 in 1961 (only two years after the release of the Zoomar, the worlds first zoom lens). The high-speed 6-lens Ennaston (later Ennalyt) 85mm f/1.5 was also one of the world-renowned lens developments in the 1950s.
Enna was the first lens manufacturer in West Germany to introduce a wide-angle lens of the Retrofocus type. This lens design, developed almost simultaneously by Angenieux Paris and Carl Zeiss Jena (Flektogon), enabled shorter focal lengths than 40mm in 35mm SLR cameras for the first time. This lens was the Ultra Lithagon 28mm f/3.5 (Patent#US2959100A) which appeared in 1955 (it was also the second 28mm lens ever made). It was the brainchild of Hans Lautenbacher, and was so named due to the existence of the Lithagon 35mm. His contributions also included the retrofocus lens calculations which produced the wide-angle Lithagon 35mm f/2.8 (1953, Patent#DE1062028), and Enna’s ultrawide Lithagon 24mm f/4 (1960, Patent#DE1228820).
Enna is most typically associated with the Lithagon family of lenses, mostly in the wide-angle spectrum. The name had to be abandoned around 1960 for legal reasons. From then on the lenses were called “Ennagon” or “Ennalyt”. Prior to 1956 Enna lenses read “Enna-Werk München” on the lens ring, and from 1957 onwards they read “ENNA München.” In 1958 Enna introduced the Sockel lens system “Springblendensockel”, a precursor to Tamron’s Adapt-all system. This allowed various lens units to be mounted to different cameras using appropriate adapters. The adapters incorporated both the aperture and focusing controls. There were two (incompatible) versions of the system: the first was semi-automatic, offering twelve lenses from 24-240mm for Exakta and M42 mounts; the second was automatic with ten lenses, and additional adapters for Alpa and Miranda.
The company still exists, but now focuses on precision plastic injection molding. This diversification had begun in the early 1970s, with the realization that German lens production was loosing ground to Japan. They started with the production of plastic parts for the camera industry, and by the 1990s it had become the main focus of the company.
Notable lenses:
- Ultra Lithagon 28mm f/3.5
- Super-Lithagon 35mm f/1.9
- Lithagon 24mm f/4
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