The story
Early history
Ferdinand Adolph Lange, son of Johann Samuel Lange, was born in Dresden on 25 February 1815. When his parents were separated, he was adopted by a foster family, who luckily offered him a chance of proper education. In 1829, he entered the Technische Bildungsanstalt (technical education institute) of Dresden. The training in the school was accompanied by three days of theoretical studies and the other three days were devoted to manual craftwork with a student's master. Ferdinand Adolph Lange's master was Johann Christian Friedrich Gutkaes (the maker of the famous Five-Minute Clock at Dresden's Semperoper), who at the time was second mechanic at the Mathematics and Physics Salon providing an astronomical clock with a mercury compensation pendulum for his service observatory.
After finishing his apprenticeship with honours in 1835, Ferdinand A. Lange worked for Gutkaes for more than two years. In 1837 Lange embarked on his journeyman years, which took him to France, England and Switzerland. In Paris, he spent four years working as workshop manager of Austrian watchmaker Joseph Thaddäus Winnerl (inventor of the split-seconds chronograph). The lectures given by the physician and director of the Paris Observatory Dominique François Arago extended his knowledge of astronomy. After France, he went to Switzerland and Great Britain to improve his knowledge and skills even further with well-known watchmakers. However, Lange's intention was to set up a watchmaking industry in Saxony. He returned to Dresden in 1841 and became partners with his master's business.
Lange wasted no time in building complicated watches to put into practice what he learnt through his journey years, which all noted in his notebook. His main ambition was the industrialization of the area as he made verbal proposals in a letter he sent to the government minister Von Lindenau and councillor Weissenbach. His ambition was to found a watch manufactory in Saxony. He asked a commission from the government to grant him a business licence in the less economically fortunate region, “Erzgebirge” (Ore Mountains) in Glashütte. Mentions in the letter as follows:
“...Should the high council be able and willing to grand the wherewithal for the establishment of an institution and the welfare of 10-15 young people, and to entrust me with its leadership, I am certain that in a near future, livelihood and prosperity will spread among a large number of these unfortunate people...”
On 7 December 1845, he founded A. Lange & Cie, which later became A. Lange & Söhne in Glashütte. Lange founded not only a watchmaking factory that would bear his name; he also established his vision for an entire industry. Starting with a team of 15 apprentices, to whom he taught the basics of watchmaking. Later on, when they had thoroughly mastered the crafts, he encouraged them to leave his company to start their own small supplier firms. Thus, he established a watchmaking cluster, which provided the region with a new means to make a living.
As Ferdinand Adolph Lange travelled through France he saw French watchmakers still used duodecimal ligne as length unit instead of the new metric system. Accordingly, he recorded detailed calculations for each individual gear-wheel size. Returning from his travels, he started to use the metric system in watchmaking instead of the traditional norm, ligne. Soon after, he built his first micrometer in Dresden from the plans in his journey book. It could measure millimeters to the thousandth. Along with a measurement system, he invented various tools like hand-powered face-lathe to slide-rules and dixieme gauges.
Rise to fame
In 1868, Ferdinand A. Lange's elder son Richard entered the company, and the company name changed to A. Lange & Söhne (A. Lange & Sons). He had seven children and also took on political responsibility in his home town: He was the mayor of Glashütte for a period of 18 years. After retiring from this position, he was awarded with the honorary citizenship. Additionally, the citizens of Glashütte established the Lange Foundation, which provided pensions for local watchmakers. He died in 1875.
At the time when Emil and Richard Lange joined the company, the name A. Lange & Söhne was already growing and the company needed new premises. In 1873, the company moved to the Stammhaus, which is being used as the company's headquarters today. The new building gave Lange senior the opportunity to realize his idea, a clock with a pendulum of almost 10 meters, the longest in the world. Emil and Richard Lange were complementing each other. While Emil was interested in business, Richard Lange followed his father's path. He advanced his father's inventions and patents such as quarter repeater and chronograph. Some of his notable patents include an up/down power reserve indicator (patent No. 9349), improved chronometer restraints, pocket watch with minutes counter, and addition of beryllium to improve the rate characteristic of balance spring
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Emil Lange was awarded the cross of the Knight of the French Legion of Honor for his services as a juror at the Paris world fair and the presentation of the “Jahrhunderttourbillon” (tourbillon of the century). The model was auctioned in 1990 and sold for 1,500,000 Marks. Furthermore, Emil Lange was given the honorary title of “Kommerzienrat” (commercial councilor) by King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony for his success as businessman. In 1898, German Emperor Wilhelm II commissioned A. Lange & Söhne to make a pocket watch that would be presented to Sultan Abdul Hamid II during an official visit of the Ottoman Empire. The watch is in the collection of the Topkapı Palace.
The turn of the 20th century came with a change in fashion. Flat watches for men were increasing in demand. A. Lange & Söhne came up with a new design and registered it in 1898 as “Glashütte caliber” pocket watch. However, in the beginning of the century, in 1904 “Glashütte Präzisons-Uhrenfabrik Akt. Ges.” was founded and then in 1906 “Nomos-Uhr-Gesellschaft” came up. Both companies offered machine-made watches or movements imported from Switzerland and cased up in Glashütte. By contrast, A. Lange & Söhne was still offering hand-made watches and operating with high costs.
World Wars I & II
Due to World War I, demand for precious gold watches fell sharply. Many companies had to let go most of their workforce. At the same time, Germany closed its borders to Swiss watches and movements forcing firms dependent on Switzerland out of production. Shortly after the war, German watchmakers founded “Deutsche Präzisions-Uhrenfabrik Glashütte in Sachsen GmbH” (German precision watch factory Glashütte in Saxony), known by its acronym DPUG. The idea was to go to mass production using latest technological machinery. Emil Lange decided not to follow this direction. In 1919, he retired and left the company to his three sons: Otto, Rudolf and Gerhard Lange.
To counter inexpensive production of DPUG, Otto Lange launched a new brand “OLIW” (Original Lange Internationales Werk) and designed a 43mm diameter movement. It was protected in Germany under registered design No. 748 972. It took years to complete the OLIW and serial production did not start until the late 1920s. Between 1921 and 1923, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic triggered a wave of corporate bankruptcies. Prices ran out of control, for example a loaf of bread, which cost 250 marks in January 1923, had risen to 200,000 million marks in November 1923. At A. Lange & Söhne, sales of OLIW remained behind expectations. In the Glashütte watch industry, most of the workforce was laid off during 1920 and 1930s. Walter Lange describes the situation as follows:
“I was born in the Weimar era; then came the crash in 1929 and the great unemployment. I can still see it today; it was a childhood trauma for me, when I looked out the living room window and saw all the unemployed men lined up, waiting across the street. I will never forget that view.”
Germany's military buildup of the 1930s brought the demand for precision watches back to Glashütte. From the second half of the thirties to the end of World War II, A. Lange & Söhne was one of five watch manufacturers (the others being Stowa, Laco, Wempe and IWC) that built B-Uhren for Germany's air force (Luftwaffe). B-Uhren is an abbreviation of Beobachtungsuhren, literally: observation watches. The total military production amounted to about 13,500 precision watches, equipped with caliber 48 (small seconds) and caliber 48.1 (sweep seconds) with a movement diameter of 48mm.
A. Lange & Söhne, as well as other Glashütte watchmakers, used slave labour to build chronometers, timers, and fuses. During this time Glashütte contained more prisoners than residents; most were women from other European countries.
On 8 May 1945, the last day of the war, the Lange headquarter and main production building was almost completely destroyed in a Soviet air raid. The Glashütte watch companies were nationalized in 1948. At the time, Lange was working on a new movement: Caliber 28, a wristwatch format of the caliber 48. It went into production in 1949 as the last movement developed by A. Lange & Söhne. Watches from this period were signed “Lange VEB” (Volkseigener Betrieb - publicly owned enterprise). When the seized watch companies were merged in 1951 to form VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe, the Lange name disappeared from the dials.
Recent development
On 7 December 1990, following German reunification, Walter Lange and Günter Blümlein, a watch industry executive, restored the company as Lange Uhren GmbH, with the assistance of several Swiss watch manufacturers, including IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre. It was re-established on the exact date 145 years after Walter's great-grandfather Ferdinand Adolph Lange founded the original company. The new company re-registered A. Lange & Söhne as its trademark, and was again based in Glashütte. It presented its first range of wristwatches in 1994.
Since 2000, A. Lange & Söhne has been a member of the Richemont group, and only manufactured around five thousand watches every year. In 2017, Walter Lange died at age 92.
From Wikipedia’s article on A. Lange & Söhne, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4