Haha, thanks a lot, now I'm gonna need latex gloves to handle it.
But seriously, this lens is a true tele design and so it's shorter than the non-tele version of the same vintage. It's small and light enough to put in a shirt pocket.
I haven't compared mine to the other vintage Elmarit versions so I can't give you any first hand info. I do have a 1961 3 element Elmar f4 which is sharper wide open and really tiny too, but for portraits I prefer the tele-Elmarit for its one stop aperture advantage, better bokeh and slightly softer and more dreamy skin rendering.
The new Elmarit is incredibly sharp and a really great lens but it's quite a bit bit bigger and heavier than this diminutive classic.
One caveat though, beware that some of the older Canadian versions had a problem with coating degradation on the rear element. I'm pretty sure all the later issues and particularly the German versions were problem free.