Helmecke Brillen In 1947 Gerhard Helmecke established the firm which would bear his name in Wattenbek, a pastoral farming community 12 miles southwest of the Baltic port city Kiel. Lacking even modest financial resources, as well as a source for essential machinery, every piece of production equipment would be salvaged from scrap-yards. Moreover, virtually all machinery had been severely burned and damaged during the war, all would require painstaking reconditioned and modification. The firm began its existence as a contract supplier of eyeglass temples; these were sold to a regional eyeglass frame manufacturer. The production of temples was fraught with problems as highly flammable celluloid material required drilling to a depth of 6" inches (150 mm). The combination of an extraordinarily deep and narrow hole (1/16"diameter) resulted in the frequent breakage of nearly irreplaceable steel drill bits. To keep breakage to a minimum only a select few production workers were assigned the challenging and sensitive task of drilling out core wire holes. Despite these and many other daunting challenges the firm grew rapidly, rising from the post war ashes. Within a few years the firm began to produce complete frames. The new model manufacturing facility, set within a nature-park landscape would eventually expand to more than one quarter million square feet. Contained within four primary and five secondary buildings. Primary manufacturing and administration facilities were completed by the early 1960's. Beyond the sprawling production facilities the plant included extensive and completely self sufficient: tooling department, machine shop, electrical department, wood working department, painting department, printing department, design and drafting department, raw material production facility, fire department, employee cafeteria and recreational facilities, Frame production included not only high volume die cut stamping, but molding injection, as well as pantograph methods. The bulk of material used for die cutting and pantographing was generated through wide sheet extrusion, by means of a multi-line, multi-color facility. Hinges, rivets and core wires were produced with swaging  machines and other automated optical wire processing machinery. Employing up to 400, the state of the art factory produced as many as 8,000 frames per day, making it the third largest eyeglass frame producer in Germany, just behind two long established competitors, Metzler and Rodenstock.