1948

Buchenwald
Mauren

Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein

There is no insurance without calculation, accounting, and various forms of data processing. And there is no real comprehension of insurance history without awareness of the revolutionary changes in office work that were caused by the development of at first mechanical and later electronic calculating machines.

Curt Herzstark (1902–1988) was an Austrian engineer who designed a mechanical pocket calculator in the 1930s, but had no opportunity to manufacture it due to the Nazi annexation of Austria. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The conditions of his imprisonment in Buchenwald seriously affected his health, but the camp commanders found out about his skills, work experience, and his ground-breaking ideas for a new type of calculator. Herzstark was called to work in the "Gustloff Werke," an arms factory linked to the camp, and allowed to continue his work on the calculator.

Production of the "Curta" started only after the camp's liberation by the Allies in 1945. Herzstark was invited to Liechtenstein, where the company Contina AG was established to produce his invention. In autumn 1948, the first "Curta" calculator left the factory. The small but powerful device was produced until the early 1970s, a time when the first electronic pocket calculators with LED displays came on the market.

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