Glashütte

Glashütte appears in records from the middle of the fifteenth century, when silver drew people to the valley where the Müglitz and Prießnitz meet, and it received mining and town rights in 1506. As mining declined, poverty followed, and in the early 1840s the Saxon government looked for people who would bring new industry to the Ore Mountains.^1, 5

The Dresden watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange answered with a plan for watchmaking. With a state loan to train apprentices, he began making pocket watches in Glashütte with fifteen of them on December 7, 1845, the start of A. Lange & Söhne.^1, 2, 3

Lange divided the work among specialists and encouraged trained men to set up their own supplier firms, so a cluster of independent makers grew up around his. The town names Moritz Grossmann among the watchmakers who followed; Robert Mühle, who trained with Grossmann, went on to make the measuring instruments the industry needed, the origin of Mühle-Glashütte. The way of building movements that grew from this is described under The Glashütte tradition.^{1, 10, 11, 12}

The German School of Watchmaking opened on May 1, 1878, largely through Grossmann’s efforts, and moved into its own building in 1881. Under East Germany it became a technical college and, from 1957, an engineering school for precision engineering.^1, 14

The museum says the engineering school closed in 1992. A foundation named after Nicolas G. Hayek was set up in 2006; with the support of the Swatch Group, Glashütte Original bought and restored the old school, and the German Watch Museum Glashütte opened there on May 22, 2008, sharing the building with Glashütte Original’s own school for watchmakers.¹⁴

Its permanent exhibition, the museum says, tells the town’s watchmaking history from 1845, through the world wars, dismantling and expropriation to reunification, with a room on the products of VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe.¹⁷

After the Second World War the town’s firms were dismantled and expropriated, and in July 1951 they were merged into one state enterprise, VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe. Some left: the founder of Tutima took the business to the West, to Ganderkesee in Lower Saxony.^{3, 12, 19, 20}

Reunification brought a run of new companies, a turn told under Glashütte after reunification. In 1990 Walter Lange re-founded A. Lange & Söhne, Roland Schwertner founded NOMOS, and the state combine became Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH, later Glashütte Original. Mühle-Glashütte was re-established in 1994, Moritz Grossmann was founded in 2008, and Tutima opened a new factory in the town in the same year, as it dates it.^{3, 12, 22, 23, 24, 25}

The town says nine watchmakers work there today. Sinn, based in Frankfurt, has most of its cases made by SUG, a case maker in Glashütte.^1, 27

Protecting the name

A German regulation of February 22, 2022, now reserves the name for watches made in the area of origin: the town itself, two districts of neighbouring Altenberg for supplying and finishing parts, and Dresden for certain plating steps. Assembly, casing, dial and hand fitting must take place in Glashütte, and more than half the value of the main stages must be added in the area. How such rules work elsewhere is described under Origin labels.⁴