Nomos Glashütte

Roland Schwertner took the name from a watch brand in Glashütte’s past, because he liked its meaning: nomos is Greek for law or order. NOMOS has kept its headquarters in the town’s railway station.^1, 3, 4

Its big step came in 2014 with the NOMOS swing system, an escapement of its own: balance, balance spring, pallet and escape wheel. Seven years of research and eleven million euros went into it, with Dresden University of Technology and the Fraunhofer Institute, and it ended the company’s reliance on Swiss suppliers for that part. A thin automatic movement, the neomatik DUW 3001, followed in 2015.^2, 4

The company grew across the town: a parts factory in the Schlottwitz district in 2017, a former marine-chronometer workshop where movements are assembled, enlarged in 2014, and a former church used since 2020 for its own trade fair. Its shop stands in the building where Ferdinand Adolph Lange opened his workshop in 1845, opposite the watch museum.¹

NOMOS’s movements are made almost entirely in Glashütte, well within the rule, law since 2022, that reserves the town’s name for watches made there; the rule is explained under Origin labels. Two decades earlier NOMOS had taken the neighbouring Mühle-Glashütte to court over its use of Swiss parts.^{8, 9, 10, 11}

In 2024 the company’s senior management received the Federal Cross of Merit for its commitment to democracy and diversity and for the town’s standing abroad.¹