Grenchen

Grenchen runs from the Aare plain at 430 metres up to the Jura’s outer chain at 1,348 metres; it is the chief town of the Lebern district and the second town of the canton of Solothurn.^1, 2

It was a farming village. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland counts 67 farmers, 105 half-farmers and 162 day labourers in 1768, and says agriculture shaped the village until the middle of the 19th century.¹

Watchmaking was brought in from western Switzerland and took hold in 1851, driven by the water of the village stream; small workshops for ébauches and finishing followed.^1, 2

The railway between Biel and Solothurn reached Grenchen in 1857, and between 1850 and 1870 the population grew by 60 per cent, the Historical Dictionary records.^1, 2

Urs Schild, a teacher who kept the books of the new ébauche works Girard Frères & Kunz from 1852, bought it with Josef Girard after its bankruptcy in 1856. The Historical Dictionary records that he began making ébauche parts by machine in 1861, turned the firm into a watch manufacture in 1876, and that it became Eterna in 1906.^3, 9

When watchmaking began is told two ways: the Historical Dictionary dates its arrival to 1851 and the Girard & Schild purchase to 1856, which Eterna counts as its founding; German Wikipedia names Josef Girard and Urs Schild as the pioneers of 1851.^1, 2, 3

Urs’s brother Adolf left in 1896 to found the ébauche maker A. Schild & Cie, which employed about 800 people by 1915; the Historical Dictionary says that under his sons A. Schild SA became the largest ébauche maker in the world.^4, 11

The commune paid to train local workers, factories kept being founded until 1900 and suppliers grew beside them, the Historical Dictionary records. In 1926 two Grenchen firms, A. Schild and A. Michel, founded Ebauches SA with the Fontainemelon works.^{1, 12, 13}

The Historical Dictionary dates series production of self-winding watches in Grenchen to 1926, the year Fortis of Grenchen began making John Harwood’s design, and records Eterna’s Eterna-Matic with a rotor on ball bearings in 1948.^1, 9, 15

The Historical Dictionary records that radical democrats persecuted abroad, Giuseppe Mazzini among them, found refuge in Grenchen in 1835 to 1837.¹

The Grenchenberg tunnel of 1915 put Grenchen on the line from France and Basel through Bern and the Lötschberg and Simplon to Italy.^1, 2

An airfield opened in 1931; the Historical Dictionary credits Adolf Schild, director of A. Schild, with starting it.^1, 2, 16

The town lived by exports and felt every world downturn: the Historical Dictionary names the slumps of 1921 to 1923 and 1929 to 1933. German Wikipedia says three young workers were shot by troops in the general strike of 1918 and that many local factories worked for Germany in the Second World War, one of them on an Allied blacklist.^1, 2

In the boom years after 1945 many workers moved to Grenchen; the Historical Dictionary says the crisis of the 1970s ended that immigration.¹

Grenchen grew from 1,581 inhabitants in 1850 to 20,051 in 1970, then fell to 16,800 in 1980 and 15,938 in 2000.^1, 2

The Historical Dictionary records that restructuring and dismissals in watchmaking drove the population down, and that new firms settling from the 1990s slowed the fall; German Wikipedia credits the Swatch, made there from 1983, with renewed growth.^1, 2

The Swatch Group gathered production in Grenchen: ETA has its headquarters there and has managed the making of the Swatch there since 1985.^5, 6, 18

German Wikipedia names Breitling, Certina, ETA, Eterna, Titoni and Fortis among the watch firms in the town today, and says the Kultur-Historisches Museum, in the former Rain school since 1999, gives most of its permanent exhibitions to watchmaking.²