# Relationship Between A. Lange & Sohne and Glashutte Original?



## SectionEht (Apr 23, 2009)

Hello,

These 2 German brands have recently caught my eye and I noticed that they share a lot of similar design cues. Is there any relationship between the two other than both being located in the same geographical area? Thanks for the help!


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## Olivier Müller (Jan 31, 2010)

SectionEht said:


> Hello,
> 
> These 2 German brands have recently caught my eye and I noticed that they share a lot of similar design cues. Is there any relationship between the two other than both being located in the same geographical area? Thanks for the help!


Well, not as far as I know... Some of their respective items look similar or so, but it's just a pure traditional design, in fact.

Good question though !

I'm quite a fan of L&S


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## marcone (Nov 2, 2008)

Representing high end german watch manufacturing they tend to have some common features deriving from the tradition of watchmaking in Germany; other than that they are part of different groups: ALS is part of the Richemont group while GO is part of the Swatch conglomerate.


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## crabman (Nov 27, 2008)

Adolph Lange started the watchmaking industry in Glashutte. If memory serves correctly around 1845 he petitioned the government of Saxony for a repayable subsidy to help him start a workshop in Glashutte, at that time a spent mining town. In return he was required to train 15 young men of Glashutte in watchmaking with the repayment of his debt along with some other stipulations. His business was a success and over time a watchmaking industry would grow around his manufactury seeing more than half the local population involved in the business of watchmaking in some fashion by the turn of the century. 

Lange invited other watchmakers of the time to join him and somewheres in the 1850s Assman came to Glashutte, Strasser and Rhode set up shop around the 70s, and so on. Call it the 80s Grossman (Grossmen?) would set up a school of watchmaking with its success near certain thanks to the need for more skilled hands in the industry. There are many more but I cant recall them all from memory. At any rate all this came to a stop at the start of WWI and the industry died off during the war. After the war a company was formed from the ashes with names I could never pronounce that would be I suppose the start of Glashutte Original specifically. They used the term Original Glashutte in their Logo to separate themselves as a real manufactury derived from the pre war glory rather than being one of the imitations that had sprung up in the void. Somewhere in the early 20s Glashutte Original first appeared on a watch dial. All of the Glashutte watchmakers and industry faced tough times as the embargo on German watches had killed demand for the watches and the depression was hurting sales of all watches in general. 

The industry did not fully recover before the start of WW2 and for all practical purposes it died at that time. I have read on the last day of the war or within the last few days of the war, not sure which is true, Glashutte was bombed. The Lange manufactury was completely destroyed as were others with most taking some damage. Following that the soviets combined what remained into the VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetrebe (spelling almost certainly wrong, lol) a huge conglomerate. Those people not needed, like engravers for instance, were sent off to fun pursuits like uranium mining. Forty years later at the reformation there was nothing really left but a few proud names and some workers who could be trained more easily than someone brought in off the street. 

Obviously the most valuable name was Lange and Walter who had fled to the west after the war was in a prime negotiation position being the great grandson of Adolph Lange. I have never read a full accounting of exactly how it went down but without Walter it would be hard to make a new Lange fly and he did not join in with the group that eventually would form the new Glashutte Original, after Lange the next most valuable name. There is reportedly bad blood between Lange and Glashutte over this and there are no ties between them now. Except of course a shared tradition that these new companies would be founded on and is the reason for their similar aesthetic.

Hopefully I have not butchered this up too badly, Im going on memory but this should represent a somewhat accurate synopsis. It really is a fairly eventful history in glashutte and those with an interest in this kind of thing might enjoy reading up on it.


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## SectionEht (Apr 23, 2009)

Wow! Thanks for the extremely informative post! It sounds like the German Watch Industry has a really interesting history. I'll have to read up on it.


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## Janne (Apr 16, 2007)

Did not the ocupying Soviets dismantle some of the remainig watchmaking machinery in Glashutte, and take it back home?
So the new GUB had to ctart from the beginning, now mainly with really simple movements?


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## crabman (Nov 27, 2008)

Yeah, they took a good chunk of skill people, machinery, manufacturing methodology, and technology back home. Something they did in every field of endeavor. This worked out since initially there were a lot more bodies and machinery than needed to fire up what remained in Glashutte. Enough so that some were sent off to work camps. It was slow going at the start and it was 5 years of so after the war before the area would be rolling, consolidated, and fully joined up with its state masters. Production was basic movements in tool watches at the outset with a little more interesting stuff coming later. Finishing was rough. Both would get better over time. This is what I meant by a body of workers that could be more easily trained. While there were people building watches the area was lacking in the more difficult skills needed to produce a modern high end mechanical watch after the fall.


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## sierra2kilo (Dec 1, 2008)

crabman said:


> Obviously the most valuable name was Lange and Walter who had fled to the west after the war was in a prime negotiation position being the great grandson of Adolph Lange. I have never read a full accounting of exactly how it went down but without Walter it would be hard to make a new Lange fly and he did not join in with the group that eventually would form the new Glashutte Original, after Lange the next most valuable name. There is reportedly bad blood between Lange and Glashutte over this and there are no ties between them now. Except of course a shared tradition that these new companies would be founded on and is the reason for their similar aesthetic.


I'm bumping this thread because it was recently referenced elsewhere, and wanted to add a little clarification.

Good details above, but the chronology on one crucial thing is off just a bit: Walter Lange and Günter Blümlein re-founded A. Lange & Söhne in 1990, and unveiled their line in 1994, with Glashütte Original being established later in 1994 from the ashes of the old East German conglomerate, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB). While it's just a few years, the order of events is a fairly important detail.

The short version is that GUB was created from an amalgam of Glashütte-based watch and "precision mechanics" companies. VEB Mechanik A. Lange & Söhne, Glashütte/Sa., the nationalized post-war Soviet expropriation of ALS by the Soviets, later became Mechanik Lange & Söhne GmbH, before GUB was later founded from the remnants of [A. Lange & Söhne, Uhren-Rohwerke Fabrik Glashütte AG, Otto Estler, Linding & Wolf, R. Mühle, and Gössel & Co. Their early movements that were based on pre-expropriation ALS designs aside-the cal. 28 being notable as being post-occupation but pre-expropriation, Lange's first calibre designed as a wristwatch at Walter's behest-GUB's movements were more or less the horological equivalents of Trabants (until their later days, as the link to Mike's article below illustrates), and by that point the relevant members of the Lange family had been jailed or exiled, with the management of the company left to those more sympathetic to the Soviet cause.

After the Berlin Wall fell, Walter Lange set out in 1989 to relaunch his family company, and a few years later ('94), GUB was privatized, and ostensibly owns the legal rights of the formerly-independent companies amalgamated (though by force) into GUB. I don't know one way or the other, but one would think a deal must have been done for A. Lange & Söhne to regain rights to use their name.

While GO has some superb models that draw from GUB-era designs (e.g., the 20th Century Vintage models), and even from their post-GUB pre-Swatch era (the Quintessentials collection is incredibly strong), despite the larger watchmaking industry F. A. Lange founded (and encouraged the growth of) in Glashütte justifying some of the more traditional features on display (e.g., 3/4 plates, gold chatons, Glashütte stripes, swan neck regulators, etc.), the high overlap of design cues largely stems from Swatch Group's strategic (and astute) decision to purchase and position GO (in 2000) as a more affordable offering against LMH's-and later Richemont's 2000 majority-acquisition of-ALS, an easy wedge given ALS's by then well-established all-precious-metals approach, with the relatively recent Pano series and its mimicry of the 1994 Lange 1 line being a notable example.

If any bad blood does exist between the two (and I don't know anything about that), it's probably that G.O. marketing materials essentially lay claim to the pre-GUB period, which was essentially A. Lange & Söhne's era. Something that, if I was in Walter Lange's shoes in 1994, I don't suppose I'd feel terribly pleased about, either. For example, GO's history page starts off with a photo of Ferdinand Adolph Lange, Walter's Lange's great-grandfather. They also tread pretty heavily on ALS's designs (of both eras) for their non-20th Century Vintage models, and I include in that the great Quintessentials line, as GO's post-GUB/pre-Swatch-era designs showed their first pre-war aesthetic inclinations (i.e., ALS pocket watches).

Walter Lange's book is worth reading for the history of ALS, and Mike Stuffler's post provides some excellent movement-specific information and historical background on the GO side.

And as murky (and marketed) as all this is, I'd appreciate any well-sourced corrections to the above. There's a massive amount of confusion out there on the topic, not helped by GO's efforts to anchor their roots in various town-of-Glashütte points of interest. (If you really want to confuse yourself, read up on Strasser & Rohde.)

TL;DR: It's more or less your Shia-Sunni divide in horological form, with the result of the conflict consisting mostly of nice watches.


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## rationaltime (May 1, 2008)

The history is interesting. I expect Mike will be along with something
to say about it.

In case you refer to more threads I started a thread for historical references
in the German watch reference area. --> Glashütte Original history
Perhaps Mike will add more information there.

Thanks,
rationaltime


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## StufflerMike (Mar 23, 2010)

Nothing to add. Indeed GO claims some historical data which do not fall into their "line".


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## flame2000 (Jun 27, 2007)

"ALS is part of the Richemont group while GO is part of the Swatch conglomerate". I don't like this. I wish they could stay independent like Nomos and not be part of any group or conglomerate.


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