Glashütte Original

Glashütte Original claims a line back to 1845, when watchmakers settled in Glashütte with Saxon government help to train local people. The town’s school of watchmaking, opened in 1878, is part of that inheritance; the company’s own school for young watchmakers still works in the same building. The craft that grew there is described under The Glashütte tradition.^1, 2

After the Second World War the town’s firms were dismantled and taken into state ownership. In July 1951 they were merged, the movement maker UROFA, the watch factory UFAG and A. Lange & Söhne among them, into VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe. For four decades it held the town’s watchmaking under one name; its story is told on that page.^1, 2, 5

Two of its watches stand out in the company’s own telling: the automatic Spezimatic of 1964, which it calls the most successful watch ever made in Glashütte, and the rectangular Spezichron of 1978.²

After reunification the combine was entered in the commercial register as Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH on October 16, 1990, legal successor to most of the town’s post-war watch enterprises; how the works was privatised is told under Glashütte after reunification. In 1994 the scaled-down business was bought by Heinz W. Pfeifer and Alfred Wallner and took the brand name Glashütte Original.^{1, 2, 5, 6}

In October 2000 the Swatch Group bought all its shares, with more than 150 employees, and kept Pfeifer as general manager. The group took the brand into more than 40 countries.^1, 3, 5

The museum describes how Glashütte Original, with Swatch Group support, bought and restored the old watchmaking school, which opened as the German Watch Museum Glashütte on May 22, 2008. The building also houses the company’s school for watchmakers, named after Alfred Helwig in 2002.^2, 7, 8