A Brief History of Glashütte Watchmaking

Switzerland is heralded as the premier exporter of luxury watches. However, Glashütte, Germany, is another key epicenter of fine watch design and production, and the Saxon region has been regaining impressive momentum in recent years.

Here we give a brief history of how watchmaking came to Glashütte and eventually blossomed into the region’s most lucrative and renowned export.

Glashütte: From 15th Century Farming Village to Boom Town
Through the 15th century, Glashütte was a sleepy farming village on Germany’s western border near the Czech Republic. But, when an ore mine was discovered in the early 1500s, Glashütte underwent an incredible boom as miners flocked to the town’s rich ore deposits. This population and economic growth came to an abrupt halt when the ore mines were exhausted in the early 19th century. The Glashütte unemployment rate spiked and the town floundered.

The government of Saxony urged companies to settle in the region to stimulate Glashütte’s economy and revive the struggling town. One of the businessmen tapped to open up shop in Glashütte was master watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange, of future A. Lange and Sohne fame.

Ferdinand Adolph Lange Brings Watchmaking to Glashütte
Lange laid out a plan to establish a watch industry in Glashütte, largely based upon the Switzerland model that aimed to keep wealth within the region by pumping up the local production of fine watches and, in turn, scaling back on expensive watches that needed to be imported from Switzerland. In 1845, Lange was granted a government loan and tasked with training 15 local apprentices (keyword being local in the hopes that the future watchmakers would remain in Glashütte after completing their apprenticeship). And so, Lange set about turning former farmers into fine watchmakers.

But, even with the government grant, success did not come easy to Lange, who struggled to build a sustainable business. In addition to training his apprentices, Lange doggedly worked on designing the movement parts and precision machinery to create highly accurate pocket watches. He also developed a three-quarter plate, an improvement to the traditional rigid movement and has become a signature of watches hailing from the Glashütte region. On the brink of bankruptcy, Lange dumped his and his wife’s family fortune into the new venture.

Ultimately, Lange firmly established the Glashütte watch industry’s basic infrastructure; his apprentices went on to become watchmakers or movement and parts suppliers. In turn, watch brands settled in Glashütte and the foundation Lange laid out began to, finally, run on its own and brought jobs and wealth to the formerly desperate German town.

Glashütte’s Watch Industry Today
Glashütte had matured into a real watchmaking center and this burgeoning industry continued to thrive until World War II, when the city of Glashütte was bombed. The damaged and fraught city was then occupied by Soviet forces who quickly set about dismantling and moving Glashütte’s factories (including the watch shops that produced pilot’s watches) to the Soviet Union. Glashütte’s watch production largely stopped altogether.

However, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, Glashütte began rebuilding its watch industry to its former glory. German watch brands, including A. Lange & Sohne, Tutima, and Muhle-Glashütte, returned and revived their production in Glashütte to carry on the tradition of German watchmaking. In 1994, watch manufacturers were privatized again and luxury watches (under the name Glashütte Original) made their market debut.

Today, in order to receive the illustrious “Made in Glashütte/Sa” title, a watch is not only assembled in Glashütte; rather, these elite watches must have at least 50% of their value added to the movement locally. This mandate preserves the local tradition of fine watchmaking and bolsters the region’s economy, just as it had a century and a half before.

To learn more about how World War II affected the Glashütte watch brand Tutima, check out their history on TrueFacet Brand Boutique.