Ahead of its time - for 180 years

180 years of Glashütte watchmaking art. The manufactory Glashütte Original is celebrating its rich heritage in a multi-part newsletter series. Discover how each generation of watchmakers has left its mark on time.

Discover more
Chapter I

Chapter I

Founding years from 1845

 Chapter II

Chapter II

“Original Glashütte” from 1878

 Chapter III

Chapter III

Change to the wristwatch from 1926

 Chapter IV

Chapter IV

New start after 1945

 Chapter V

Chapter V

Reunification from 1990

1845

How Glashütte established the metric system in watchmaking

180 years ago, a grand vision began on a small scale. With the establishment of his company in Glashütte, Ferdinand Adolph Lange was the first watch manufacturer in the world to introduce the metric system. At the time, this was still a new concept that competed with various regional unit systems. Until then, watchmakers in continental Europe typically used the Paris line, which corresponded to approximately 2.26 millimetres.

Measuring instruments from this period usually used the division by twelve. However, when calculating and measuring the delicate components of a movement, this resulted in tolerances that could lead to considerable inaccuracies. Ferdinand Adolph Lange recognised the potential of the metric system and established it in Glashütte around three decades before it became mandatory in Germany.

1851

At the same time, he developed specialised measuring instruments for practical use in watchmaking. The so-called can micrometer allowed a hitherto unknown precision of 1/100th of a millimetre. In 1851, Lange wrote:
“My first and decisive step was to construct a measure to realise any calculated ratio on the smallest scale with the greatest possible accuracy.”

Around a century later, the watch manufactory founded by Ferdinand Adolph Lange becomes part of VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe. As the official legal successor to the former state-owned enterprise, Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH continues to pursue its vision of maximum precision to this day. Since 1994, the company is using the brand name Glashütte Original as a clear commitment to its roots and as a statement of its special historical position.

State-of-the-art production techniques now allow unparalleled precision work with tolerances of a few thousandths of a millimetre. In order to fulfil its high quality standards, the manufactory continues to design and produce many of its own testing devices, for example to precisely control the curvature of a dial.

1845

The German Watchmaking School Glashütte

When the first watchmakers settled in Glashütte in the middle of the 19th century, the journey to Dresden, 30 kilometres away, took around three days. The remote region in the Ore Mountains had previously lived from mining for centuries. But as ore deposits dwindled, the local population feared for their livelihood.

The fact that the art of watchmaking gained a foothold in Glashütte, of all places, was no coincidence. It was a well-planned project supported by the Kingdom of Saxony to give the region a new perspective. However, the government did not provide funding for the construction of factories, but solely for the training of watchmakers – thus laying the foundation for an industry that was to focus on specialised expertise and its transfer from the outset.

In just a few years, Glashütte managed to rise from a humble mining town to an international institution in the manufacturing of high-precision watches. This was not the work of a single individual or even of a single company. It was a joint effort by great visionaries who supported each other and maintained close friendships. Their greatest legacy, however, was to be the German Watchmaking School Glashütte.

1878

The opening ceremony took place on May 1, 1878. The first 23 students were taught in two rooms of the Glashütte community school building. However, just one year later, more people wanted to learn the watchmaking craft at the school than the premises would allow. A separate school building was therefore built in the centre of Glashütte, which was completed in 1881 and had a capacity for 60 to 80 students. After some time, even these premises were no longer sufficient. The building was therefore extended in 1921 and was also given its own park with a monumental fountain.

Admittance to the German Watchmaking School Glashütte was a great honour, and there was a strong sense of community among the students. They formed fraternities in which they spent their free time and supported other students far beyond their own apprenticeships. The graduates spread the ethos of Glashütte watchmaking throughout the world and wore the title ‘Graduate of the German Watchmaking School Glashütte’ with pride for the rest of their lives.

Similarly, for many master watchmakers and successful industrialists from Glashütte, to be named a teacher at the renowned school was an honour as prized as a knighthood. The watch manufacturer Ludwig Strasser, famous for his precision pendulum clocks and the invention of the free spring detent escapement, played a key role in shaping the institution since its foundation. Initially, he wanted to remain part of the Strasser & Rohde company. However, when the workload of his role as managing director became too heavy alongside his teaching activities, he decided in favour of the school. In 1885, he took over the position of director, which he would hold for 32 years.

1920

Not only did the German Watchmaking School Glashütte pursue the goal of training skilled watchmakers, it also aimed to promote innovation. In the early 20th century, Alfred Helwig, master watchmaker and teacher at the school, took up the challenge of further developing the most elaborate complication in the art of watchmaking: the tourbillon. He involved his students in the work right from the start. Together, they succeeded in 1920 in mounting the construction on one side only – for the first time – thus freeing it from the upper part of its cage. The so-called Flying Tourbillon went on to become one of Glashütte's most famous inventions.

Every Saturday, the school building became the venue for a special ritual. From 8:00 a.m. to 8:10 a.m., the Berlin observatory transmitted a time signal to Glashütte via one of the first Morse Code lines in the Ore Mountains. With the help of a so-called coincidence clock, the time could be checked to the nearest tenth of a second. In his writings, Alfred Helwig described the event in vivid terms: ‘This taking of the time signal was an almost ceremonial act, accompanied by the greatest silence in the whole building, so that the coincidence of the beats could be heard very clearly. The headmaster and teacher were present, and each time a few students were called in so that they could all gradually familiarise themselves with the time signal reception.’

For many decades, the German Watchmaking School formed the social core of the Glashütte watch industry. In 1951, the community of independent companies became a state-owned group, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe. After German reunification, Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH became the legal successor to the former state-owned group and thus became the sole heir to the historic watch industry of its hometown. Today, it unites the legacy dating back to 1845 under the brand Glashütte Original.

Among the many aspects of this legacy is the fact that the company’s young talents are still trained in the same building as they were in 1881. Since 2002, Glashütte Original’s own watchmaking school has borne the name of Grand Master Alfred Helwig. With their ideas and drive, the young watchmakers, toolmakers and machinists who graduate here year after year ensure the future of Glashütte craftsmanship.

Glashütte Original has always remained true to the ideals of its forefathers. With the same innovative strength on which its success was once founded, the manufactory continues to strive for absolute perfection. Behind the scenes, the company’s engineers and watchmakers continue the work of great masterminds such as Alfred Helwig. With the patented Flyback Tourbillon, they succeeded in further developing Helwig’s ingenious mechanism. A vertical clutch brings the centrepiece of the Senator Chronometer Tourbillon to a standstill when the crown is pulled. If the crown is pulled to the next position and held there, the tourbillon cage rotates gently back to the zero mark of the second hand at its tip. Pressing the crown sets the whirlwind effortlessly in motion again – a masterful technical achievement that the Grand Master himself would doubtless have been quick to acknowledge.

1926

The Glashütte Wristwatch

Wristwatches that keep up with pocket watches – this was a quality requirement so ambitious that the Glashütte watch industry almost failed due to its own demands around 100 years ago. The small town in the Ore Mountains had long been world-famous for the unrivalled quality of its pocket watches and clocks. However, inflation and a slump in exports as a result of the First World War combined with the global economic crisis at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s had hit Glashütte's watch manufacturers hard. What ultimately threatened to be their undoing, however, was a decisive market development that Glashütte almost missed out on.

As a precise and reliable companion, the pocket watch had a firm place in the waistcoat pocket of every distinguished gentleman at the turn of the century. Until then, wristwatches were only produced in marginal numbers for use by the military or on scientific expeditions – today they would have probably been described as “tool watches”. Gradually, however, the wristwatch found its way into everyday life. In 1930, the number of wristwatches sold in Germany equalled that of pocket watches for the first time. By 1934, the share of wristwatches had risen to 65 percent, as market analyses from this period show.

In Glashütte, this development was largely dismissed as a short-lived fashion trend and wristwatches were met with scepticism: The accuracy and reliability of the wristwatch calibres in widespread use at the time did not come close to the standards with which the Glashütte companies had been manufacturing pocket watches for decades. Ultimately, some of them failed in consequence of their own standards. The Deutsche Präzisions-Uhren-Fabrik Glashütte (German Precision Watch Factory Glashütte), Germany’s largest production co-operative at the time, filed for bankruptcy in 1926.

 

The following year, two sister companies were founded from the insolvency assets, pursuing a grand vision from the outset. UROFA (Uhren-Rohwerkefabrik AG) and UFAG (Uhrenfabrik AG Glashütte) were the first companies in Glashütte to concentrate their efforts on the production of wristwatches. Dr Ernst Kurtz, who was appointed Managing Director at 38 years old, was fully aware of the competition’s enormous advantage. Trying to lead the ambitious project to success, he realised that he had to reinvent watch production in Glashütte overall.

Aside from modernising all company structures, Dr Ernst Kurtz attached great importance to training the next generation of employees. The company’s apprentices became known throughout the town as the UROFA Stifte (UROFA pins). However, they were not only recognised for their craftsmanship, but for their musicality. Dr Ernst Kurtz demanded every apprentice to learn a musical instrument during their apprenticeship – which most of them did with joy and enthusiasm. He also financed a string orchestra made up of watchmaking apprentices, who regularly organised concerts in Glashütte. Alongside music, field handball became the apprentices’ favourite sporting activity. A total of three handball teams were formed in Glashütte. In order to make their apprenticeship as comfortable as possible, Dr Ernst Kurtz sponsored the establishment of a dormitory for initially 20 and later 40 apprentices.

 

The Calibre 58 marks a breakthrough for the company – in two respects. When developing the movement, the designers prioritised a large mainspring barrel, which they contrasted with a similarly large balance. A proven principle from the construction of pocket watches, which UROFA transferred to a miniaturised format. With the aim of accommodating the mechanical components in as little space as possible, the engineers decided not to place the sweep second pinion directly in the flow of forces. Instead, they designed an indirect drive, which allowed them to place the second hand vertically above the mainspring barrel.

Dr Ernst Kurtz achieved a stroke of genius with the marketing of the Calibre 58 under the name “Raumnutzwerk”. The large-scale campaign emphasised the clever design of the compact movement measuring 20 x 28 mm with a height of 4 mm and equated its performance with that of pocket watches. The strategy hit the nerve of the times and made the Calibre 58 a sales success. UFAG assembled some of these movements into finished watches and usually marked the dials with a G for Glashütte.

 

At the beginning of the Second World War, UROFA was entrusted with the development of a chronograph that was to be specially adapted to the requirements of pilots. The watch should be able to withstand a pressure of 15 bar for at least one and a half hours and feature a flyback mechanism as well as shock protection. In addition, the movement was to guarantee a rate accuracy of -3 to +12 seconds per day – and do so reliably at temperatures between -10 and +40 degrees Celsius. With the Calibre 59 “Flieger Chronograph”, the designers at UROFA managed to fulfil all requirements.

 

The company even went as far as equipping some of the movements with even higher-quality components. Based on the Latin word “tutus”, which means safe or protected, UFAG marked these watches with the label “Tutima”. Dr Ernst Kurtz gave a personal account of the origins of this label, which today would be described as a seal of quality:

"In the search for a name for watches with special quality, a competition was held. The winner, who received the prize, was an employee of the company. The term Tutima was then created by changing one letter."

At the beginning of the 1940s, A. Lange & Söhne had still not developed a wristwatch calibre. The few wristwatches that the company had sold up to this time were largely based on movements purchased from the neighbouring UROFA. In order to meet the demand for pilot’s watches, A. Lange & Söhne instead reworked pocket watch movements. Most notably the Calibre 48, which was originally developed for observation watches. Due to the dimensions of the movement, the watches grew to enormous size. With a case diameter of 65 mm, they were however ideal for pilots who wore their watch not directly around their wrist but over the sleeves of their lined leather jackets.

 

In Glashütte, the Second World War ended on 8 May 1945 with a bombing raid by the Soviet air force. As a result, the watch industry in the partially destroyed town was devastated. The two sister companies UROFA and UFAG as well as the company A. Lange & Söhne fell into state ownership. From 1951, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe has been uniting all their production capacities under one roof. Following German reunification, the enterprise was privatised and entered in the commercial register as Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH in 1991. Since 1994, it has carried the brand name Glashütte Original.

The Glashütte watch industry can look back on an eventful past, in which highs and lows, light and shade sometimes followed each other closely – as this third chapter of our series commemorating its 180th anniversary has shown. Glashütte Original is committed to preserving this historical legacy. This includes the story of Dr Ernst Kurtz and his “UROFA pins”, who brought the wristwatch to Glashütte. Over time, the art of designing a perfect movement using limited space has been steadily evolved by them and their successors.

 

The Serenade Luna is the latest example of how Glashütte Original interprets this discipline today. Its most distinctive mark, the extra-large moon phase, is based around a moon disc that spans almost the entire surface of the in-house movement Calibre 35. Instead of the usual two moons, it has four circular images of a filigree starry sky. The shape of the moon is visually formed by the overlap with the moon window. Thanks to an integrated design, the moon phase display hardly builds up any height and at the same time manages to achieve an accuracy of a mere one-day deviation in 122 years.

1945

Inventiveness and perseverance - for 180 years

After the end of the Second World War, the Glashütte watch industry lay in ruins. The employees of the watchmaking companies salvaged what they could - senior employees hid finished watches in their homes to save them from the lootings of the Red Army. Their worst fears came true when the Soviet occupying power ordered the dismantling of the Glashütte watch industry in August 1945.

“They took everything… all the machines, every screwdriver, every blueprint, every drawing, the workbenches, simply everything,” remembers a contemporary witness and former employee of UROFA – the largest watch manufacturer in Glashütte at the time. Machines and tools as well as the company’s remaining production stocks were packed into wooden crates and transported away using 32 lorries, each with a payload of 10 tonnes.

 

The people in Glashütte were left with nothing. On their own initiative, they began to craft the equipment they needed to resume work. It turned out to be a stroke of luck that the Soviets had left behind the moulds of some of the machines when they confiscated them. Thanks to these, a nearby iron foundry was able to manufacture complicated equipment such as lathes and milling machines from scratch. Some other equipment was rebuilt by the Glashütte toolmakers entirely from memory. Fuelled by a strong sense of community, the companies also agreed to lend each other urgently needed machines.

Only a few months after the end of the war, small numbers of watches could again be assembled, for which remaining stocks of components still existed. However, as external suppliers had ceased production and some important components could not be reproduced locally, the production of pre-war movements was not viable in the long term. To cope with these severe availability issues, Helmut Klemmer – one of UROFA’s leading engineers, therefore began developing a new calibre. From the outset, his stringent goal was “unconditional in-house production of all wristwatch components.”

 

On 6 October 1945, just five months after Germany’s capitulation, the first design drawing of Calibre 61 was completed. Its construction was largely derived from Calibre 60, which was already at an advanced stage of development but could not be finalised before the end of the war. However, Calibre 61 was technically adapted to the new economic situation where many components were no longer available or could only be produced in small quantities. The base plate and the wheel bridge in the style of a three-quarter plate were made of thin sheet metal. The only milled part of the movement was the balance cock.

The first watches based on Calibre 61 were assembled from 1946. Although they were seen as a mere emergency solution at the time, this progress spread a certain spirit of optimism. The hand engraving “UROFA 61 – Wiederaufbau 1. Serie” (UROFA 61 – Reconstruction 1st series), which is often found on these watches, is a powerful testimony of this. The Soviet occupying forces tacitly allowed the people of Glashütte to continue, but initially set out to confiscate the majority of the manufactured watches as reparations.

 

Despite all the adversity, the companies managed to slowly increase their production volumes over the following years. At the same time, East German industry was reorganised into a socialist planned economy. In 1950, the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR) presented its first five-year plan, which dictated the distribution of resources and production targets throughout its entire economic area. Private companies were intentionally placed at a severe disadvantage compared to state-owned enterprises.

It may seem absurd that UROFA and UFAG applied to be transferred to state ownership of their own accord. However, concerns about a blatant shortage of supplies and the threat of labour being recalled probably made this step the only option for continuing to exist within the new structures. In 1951, the two sister companies became state-owned and were merged with Lange & Söhne, which had already been nationalised three years earlier. This merger gave rise to VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB), which would hold a monopoly position as the only watch manufacturer in Glashütte for the next four decades.

 

1964

In the GDR's economy of scarcity, luxury items or imported goods were only available to very few inhabitants. The waiting time for a new car, for example, was ranging from 12 to 15 years.

The array of products that VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe was able to offer during this time fell outside the norm in several respects: between 1951 and 1991, the company developed four new movements with automatic winding. Calibre 74, which became the heart of the Spezimatic presented in 1964, was a resounding success. With a diameter of 28 mm and a height of 5.05 mm, it was in line with the international trend towards watches with a slimmer case size.

To this day, the Spezimatic is considered the most successful watch ever produced in Glashütte. It came in dozens of different colours and – even more unusual for the socialist GDR – was available in a solid gold case. Its biggest value today lies, however, in the emotional connections that many owners associate with their watch. At the time, the Spezimatic used to be a popular gift for special occasions and sometimes even served as a replacement for a pair of wedding rings. It is because of these stories and experiences that the Spezimatic is remembered by an entire generation – and cherished by the next one.

1978

In 1978, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe presented the Spezichron and once again demonstrated its courage: inspired by the modernist architecture that reshaped entire cityscapes in Germany in those days, the new watch featured a rectangular case with rounded corners. The so-called "TV shape" is a typical design of its time and is still revered by collectors today for its retro-futuristic aesthetic. Technically, Calibre 11 stood out with its increased oscillation frequency of 4 Hertz, which allowed for a significant improvement of rate accuracy.

While the GDR’s economy struggled increasingly, the availability of supplied components and machines continued to deteriorate. VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe tried to counteract this by further expanding its own manufacturing expertise. The specially created “Abteilung Sondermaschinenbau” (Special Machine Construction Department) relied on the inventiveness and technical expertise of its engineers to create an autonomous production of several important components. From today’s perspective, a positive side effect is the resulting increase in in-house manufacturing depth.

In the course of German reunification, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe was entered in the commercial register as Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH on 16 October 1990. Following its privatisation in 1994, the company went on to continue the great watchmaking tradition of its home town under the brand name Glashütte Original, thus sending a clear signal of continuity: the brand not only draws its self-perception from the heyday of watchmaking in the 19th century, but also proudly acknowledges its watchmaking heritage from the 20th century, which was characterised by major crises and cutbacks.

Today, the GDR is remembered by most Germans for its economy of scarcity and state-controlled inefficiency. Nevertheless, it also tells the story of the determination, perseverance and creativity with which the people of Glashütte always did what they did best: making high-quality watches. The expertise in manufacturing mechanical movements, which lived on behind the Iron Curtain during the quartz crisis, as well as exceptional skills in toolmaking and mechanical engineering are key parts of Glashütte Original’s modern brand identity. With the Vintage Collection, the Saxon manufactory pays tribute to the design classics Spezimatic and Spezichron, both of which made history and shaped their time in their own way.

Subscribe to newsletter