Tutima

The two firms rose from the bankruptcy of a large Glashütte watch cooperative in 1926: UROFA made movements and UFAG finished watches. Their managing director, the lawyer Ernst Kurtz, bet on the wristwatch at a time when Glashütte still saw it as a passing fashion, and modernised production to compete with the Swiss.^1, 2, 5

UFAG put the name Tutima, from the Latin tutus, safe or protected, on its watches of higher quality. The best known is the flyback chronograph with UROFA’s Calibre 59, built for pilots in the Second World War; dates for it differ, 1941 for the watch in one account, 1939 to 1940 for the movement in another. It belongs to the story of Pilot’s watches.^{1, 2, 5, 7}

An air raid on the last day of the war destroyed the factory, and UROFA and UFAG were taken into state ownership and merged in 1951 into VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe. Kurtz went west. Accounts differ on when: shortly before the war ended by one, after it by another, with a stop in Memmelsdorf in Bavaria before production settled in Ganderkesee in 1951.^{2, 3, 5, 7}

From around 1960 Dieter Delecate carried the business on in Ganderkesee and made chronographs for armed forces. Tutima says its military chronograph became NATO’s official pilot’s watch in 1984.^3, 5

After reunification Delecate planned a return to Glashütte while keeping Ganderkesee. A new factory in a former railway depot near the old one began work on May 14, 2008; the move was celebrated in 2011 with a minute repeater made entirely in Germany. Tutima now designs its own movements, and its legal address is in Glashütte.^{4, 5, 9, 10, 11}