Over 20 years after it helped relaunch A Lange & Sohne, the asymmetrical beauty has played a defining role in establishing an identity for German watchmaking

In his memoirs of 2005, Walter Lange talks compellingly of the challenges he and IWC/Jaeger-LeCoultre boss Günter Blümlein faced rebuilding Glashütte?s once-great watchmaker in 1990. His great-grandfather?s bust still stood proud opposite the village?s train station; but everything else had either been bombed on the last day of the war, looted by the Russians swiftly afterwards, or folded into the ?VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe? (GUB) by the GDR and diverted to making humdrum watches by unskilled people, for the people.
Lange advertised jobs on the communal noticeboard at the GUB, which boasted about 1,000 employees. ?But we only received around 120 applications,? he writes. ?To be honest I had assumed we would get a much larger number. Most probably thought the idea of building a company in Glashütte to market exclusive watches sheer adventurism.? From the launch ceremony of the entire brand in 1994, with the Lange 1 in pride of place
That?s one way of putting it. No doubt the majority of the Swiss industry thought the same. But in just a few years, the revived A. Lange & Söhne not only launched successfully ? and in one stroke it quite simply took modern, industrialised watchmaking to the next level. Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin woke up one chilly October morning in 1994...