The Renaissance of Saxon Watchmaking

There are few brands that can boast the history and pedigree of Saxon watchmaker A Lange & Söhne. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of its founder, Ferdinand...

ThePeak_Fashion&Watches_TheRenaissanceOfSaxon

The Rise and Fall
Like many great watch brands of today, A Lange & Söhne’s origins are of humble ones. Founded in 1845 by Ferdinand Adolph Lange, who was born in 1815 in Dresden, the Lange brand (as it was known at the time) first started out as a family-run watchmaking company. Over the years, Ferdinand would develop a reputation for producing high quality pocketwatches and numerous innovations, and the commerce Lange encouraged would bring much prosperity to the once-sleepy town of Glashütte. Such was the high regard Ferdinand was held in that he served as the town’s mayor for a number of years, and even after his passing his watchmaking endeavours would be carried on by his sons and grandchildren.

However, the onset of the Second World War marked a turn for the worse for Lange family’s fortunes. While Lange had been commissioned to produce timepieces for the German Air Force, eventually the German military needed able-bodied men more than it did watches, and Walter Lange, the grandson of Ferdinand, was conscripted into the Army at the tender age of 16. He was then thrown onto the battlefield, where he was almost killed after being shot in the leg. “I spent the remainder of the battle lying completely still on the battlefield,” Walter Lange recalls. “I didn’t dare crawl out of the danger zone before nightfall.”

Despite his wounds, Lange managed to survive this terrible ordeal and was ferried to a field hospital near his home in Glashütte to recover. However, the misfortunes of war once again reared its ugly head and Lange saw, with his own eyes, his family’s historic manufacture destroyed in a bombing raid on 8th May 1945, the last day of the Second World War.

Not one to be deterred, Lange, along with his father and two uncles, went about rebuilding the facility and developing the Calibre 28 for a new wristwatch. But once more, tragedy struck and the company was expropriated by the Soviet Union and subsequently ceased to exist. Lange himself was forced to flee his home to avoid being drafted into a forced labour uranium mine in November 1948.

“My father was devastated; he could not cope with the loss of the manufactory and our home,” Lange laments. “He passed away less than a year later. It seemed that the family business would be lost forever and we were utterly heartbroken.”

A Rebirth From The Ashes of War
It wasn’t until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that Lange, now retired and well into his 60s, sensed a changing of the seasons for the better. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to revive the heritage of my ancestors,” Lange declared, and on the 7th of December 1990 he would go on to reregister the brand’s name as A Lange & Söhne (which translates to A Lange & Sons). “However, my intention was not to bring back the name A Lange & Söhne. Above all else, I wanted to provide the people of Glashütte with hope for the future.”

This marked the first of many great and challenging steps in Lange’s journey to reclaim what had been lost in the war. Everything had to be rebuilt; not just the bricks and mortar of the manufacture but also the expertise that had been lost when the original watchmakers had been scattered by war and economic calamity.

Fortunately, Lange counts his innate ‘stubbornness’ as his greatest quality. “It would have been easy to stay a retiree in 1990, but at the age of 66 I felt a new chapter of my life was just beginning.” Despite the odds, Lange industriously soldiered on and after four long years, A Lange & Söhne was finally able to make its first public presentation in 1994. Here, the brand presented its new collection, which consisted of the Lange 1, the Arkade, the Saxonia and Tourbillon “Pour Le Mérite”.

This momentous occasion officially marked the brand’s rebirth from the ashes of the World Wars and Cold War. Not only that, it embodied a real and tangible hope for the war-weary people of Glashütte. Since the end of the Second World War, East Germany had known little but misery and economic decline as it stagnated in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Thus, the eyes of not only Germany, but the whole world were upon Lange to witness this event.

“There was enormous media exposure,” Lange recounts. “Ultimately, it wasn’t just about our watches. The re-establishment of our company marked the rebirth of the economy of the Free State of Saxony.”

Growing From Strength to Strength
Many have likened A Lange & Söhne’s journey to that of a mythical phoenix rising from the ashes; renewed and reborn in a blaze of glory. Today A Lange & Söhne is renowned the world over for producing some of the most robust, mechanically complex and innovative timepieces. Unlike many others, A Lange & Söhne’s timepieces are equipped only with their own in-house movements, and thus far, the brand has refused to equip any of their watches with a quartz movement. A Lange & Söhne is also one of the few brands that practices ‘double assembly’ – the act of assembling, disassembling and reassembling a timepiece – for the purpose of quality control.

Another element that sets
A Lange & Söhne apart from their Swiss counterparts is their mastery of German Silver, an alloy of nickel and copper. While this material is notoriously difficult to work with, its inherent strength allows A Lange & Söhne to produce more intricate movements with finer and slimmer components, which would not be possible if they were to use conventional brass instead. German Silver also boasts a unique sheen that is warmer in terms of aesthetics when compared to stainless steel.

The growth of A Lange & Söhne in terms of its production capacity is just as impressive. When Lange first set about rebuilding the brand back in 1990, he only had a humble workforce of 15 craftsmen. Earlier this year, in August, A Lange & Söhne opened brand a new 5,400sq m manufacturing complex to accommodate its growing workforce consisting of several hundred watchmakers and artisans. This site, which is based in Glashütte, is also a geothermal energy plant and a completely C02-free facility.

To celebrate two centuries of resilience and excellence, as well as the birth year of the brand’s founding father, A Lange & Söhne recently unveiled their 1815 “200th Anniversary F A Lange” earlier this year in February. Like the rest of its siblings in the 1815 collection, the 1815 “200th Anniversary F A Lange” is a decidedly classic timepiece in nature – offering many traditional German watchmaking finishes, such as the hand-engraved balance cocks, blued screws and gold chatons – in homage to the first timepieces created by the brand.

So as Lange looks upon his hometown this year, having seen its rise, fall and subsequent rebirth from the ashes of war over the course of nine decades, he does so with a smile on his face. “It’s wonderful to see so many people crafting watches in Glashütte again,” Lange iterates. “The blemishes of war are all but gone. That makes me happy.”

Type keyword(s) and press Enter