History of the Adolph Lange & Söhne watch manufactory in Glashütte

A. Lange & Söhne is now the registered trademark of the German watch manufacturer Lange Uhren GmbH from Glashütte , Saxony . Lange Uhren GmbH, in turn, belongs to the Richemont Group.

On December 7, 1845, the Saxon watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange , a student and son-in-law of the Saxon court watchmaker Johann Christian Friedrich Gutkaes senior , founded the watch manufactory "A. Lange & Cie." in Glashütte near Dresden . In an early example of state structural policy, Lange received a loan of 7,800 thalers as financial assistance from the Royal Saxon Ministry of the Interior to found the company and train 15 apprentices in the structurally weak town of Glashütte near Dresden. The company struggled for a long time with initial difficulties, but by 1875 the company had over 70 employees. Ferdinand Adolph Lange thus gave impetus to the development of the structurally weak town in the Saxon Ore Mountains as a center of German precision watchmaking and in competition with the established Swiss manufacturers. Ferdinand Adolf Lange's two eldest sons, Richard and Emil Lange , joined their father's company in 1868, which was subsequently renamed "A. Lange & Söhne." Under the direction of Lange's sons, the manufactory achieved worldwide fame.

The company M. Stellmann, founded in Hanover in 1886, immediately became the main branch of the company from Glashütte. ^{[ 2 ]}

At the end of the 1930s, Otto Lange, the grandson of Ferdinand Adolph Lange , and Herbert Wempe, owner of the Wempe Chronometerwerke in Hamburg , planned to set up a regulating factory in the Glashütte Observatory . ^{[ Note 1 ]} The Second World War thwarted the plan; both manufacturers had to produce chronometers , marine chronometers , and observation watches for the German Navy and Air Force instead. ^{[ 3 ]}

A. Lange & Söhne existed for exactly 103 years until 1948, when the company was expropriated by the Soviet occupying forces. Until then, Emil Lange's sons, Otto, Rudolf, and Gerhard, steered the company's fortunes. More than 30 watch patents were issued under Ferdinand Adolf Lange and his descendants.

Until 1877, the company name and brand name were the same, "A. Lange & Söhne." In 1877, a second, somewhat simplified pocket watch series appeared under the brand name "Deutsche Uhrenfabrikation." From then on, A. Lange & Söhne owned two renowned watch brands. Later, "OLIW" (Original Lange Internationales Werk) was added as a third brand, marking the first step toward industrial pocket watch production. A. Lange & Söhne missed the trend toward wristwatches; until 1945, wristwatches primarily used purchased movements of Swiss origin. It wasn't until after 1945 that the first and—until the company was refounded in 1990—only Lange wristwatch movement (caliber 28) was developed.

During the Soviet occupation from 1945 and from 1949 in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), seven remaining watch factories and suppliers located in Glashütte were nationalized and merged in 1951 to form the state-owned enterprise VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB).

Rudolf Lange's two sons and great-grandchildren of Ferdinand Adolph Lange (I), Ferdinand Adolph Lange (II) (1922–1989) and Walter Lange (1924–2017), fled to western Germany. Ferdinand Adolph (II) founded the watch factory "A. Lange Pforzheim" in Würm near Pforzheim and managed its business. Watches were manufactured here using purchased German and Swiss movements. The company existed until 1987. Walter Lange worked at the factory as workshop manager and later moved into the jewelry industry.

After German reunification in 1993, the Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH emerged from the state-owned enterprise GUB as the direct successor to the VEB.

On December 7, 1990 – exactly 145 years to the day after his great-grandfather founded the company – at the age of 67, Walter Lange founded "Lange Uhren GmbH" as a new watch manufacturer and then acquired the trademark rights for "A. Lange & Söhne." These rights had initially been transferred to the state-owned GUB (Stately Owned Enterprise) as a result of Soviet expropriation and, after reunification, temporarily to the Treuhandanstalt (Treuhand Agency). While there is no direct legal corporate heritage, "Lange Uhren GmbH" continues the history of this venerable watch brand. The brand's resurgence is thanks to Günter Blümlein, then President of the International Watch Company (IWC). With financial and personnel support from LMH Holding ( Les Manufactures Horlogères ), which at the time—as the owner of Vacheron Constantin and a majority stake in Jaeger-LeCoultre —was part of VDO and, from 1994, was managed under the umbrella of Mannesmann AG , the new company successfully established itself on the market. In 2001, the company, along with several other Swiss watch brands, became part of the Richemont Group, headquartered in the canton of Geneva .

On October 24, 1994, Blümlein and Lange jointly presented their first four watch models: the LANGE 1 , the TOURBILLON “Pour le Mérite,” the SAXONIA , and the ARKADE . The Lange 1 , the Saxonia , and the Arkade featured the patented outsize date that has since become the brand’s hallmark – a outsize date display modeled on the stage clock for Dresden’s Semperoper , once built by Gutkaes. Other well-known models include the Datograph , the Cabaret , the Langematik Perpetual , the Double Split Chronograph , the Richard Lange , the Tourbograph Pour le Mérite , the Zeitwerk , and the Saxonia with the “Sax-0-Mat” automatic movement .

In the biannual ranking of the 30 most important German luxury brands compiled by the magazine Wirtschaftswoche , the watch brand "A. Lange & Söhne" reached first place in 2007, ahead of the Maybach automobile manufacturer . ^{[ 4 ]} In July 2008, the 500th employee was hired. ^{[ 5 ]}

On August 26, 2015, a new, larger manufacturing building was inaugurated in Glashütte by Chancellor Angela Merkel . The 5,400 square meter space provides space for 200 employees. ^{[ 6 ]} The watchmakers work in bright studios in a nearly dust-free atmosphere. At the same time, Saxony's largest geothermal plant was created. The building, air-conditioned withgeothermal energy , operates completely CO2-neutrally . ^{[ 7 ]}

The Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon, introduced in 2016, combines three exceptional complications: a flyback chronograph with a precisely jumping minute counter, a perpetual calendar with leapfrogging displays, and a tourbillon with a stop-second function. Inside the Lange-exclusive honey gold case beats the further developed, 684-part in-house caliber 1.952.4. ^{[ 8 ]}

On January 17, 2017, the re-founder , Walter Lange, died at the age of 92. ^{[ 9 ]} In 2020, Glashütte looked back on 175 years of watchmaking history. As part of this anniversary, the Walter Lange Memorial Glashütte was inaugurated on September 18, 2020. ^{[ 10 ]}

The Lange 31 is the world's first mechanical wristwatch with a 31-day power reserve . This watch from the Saxonia family features a patented winding mechanism with two 1,850-millimeter-long mainsprings, which provide the necessary energy and are up to ten times longer than those of mechanical wristwatches with a standard power reserve. The Lange 31 is wound with a key. ^{[ 11 ] [ 12 ]}

On February 22, 2022, the regulation protecting the geographical indication of origin Glashütte came into force. ^{[ 13 ]} This means that the indication of origin "Glashütte" may only be used in commercial transactions for watches that were manufactured in the region of origin. The region of origin includes the following areas in the Free State of Saxony : the city of Glashütte, the districts of Bärenstein and Lauenstein in the city of Altenberg for supply and finishing, and Dresden for certain finishing steps .

• 1815
• arcade
• Cabaret
• Long 1
• Langematics
• Odysseus Chronograph
• Richard Lange
• Saxonia
• Timework

A. Lange & Söhne was the first non-Swiss brand to be awarded at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève in 2009. ^{[ 14 ]} Hardly any other timepiece has received as many awards in recent decades as the Lange 1 , which was named "Watch of the Year" in 1995 and 1997, among others. ^{[ 15 ]}

In 2021, the business magazine Capital honored the Cabaret Tourbillon by A. Lange & Söhne as the best watch of the year in the Métiers d'Art category with the "Capital Watch Award." ^{[ 16 ]} Just one year later, another watch from Lange won this award again in 2022.