Pforzheim

Laco began here in 1925 as Lacher & Co., and its partner Ludwig Hummel founded the movement maker Durowe in the city in 1933. Stowa moved in from the Black Forest in 1935. Both were among the five makers of the German air force’s observation watch in the Second World War, and both still make pilot’s watches on that pattern in Pforzheim.^{4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11}

In 1767 Margrave Karl Friedrich of Baden had a manufactory for watches and fine steel goods set up in Pforzheim’s orphanage. He brought in the Frenchman Jean François Autran and two Swiss partners, who hired instructors from abroad to teach the orphans to assemble watches and make jewellery. Jewellery became the town’s main trade; watchmaking lapsed and was taken up again from about 1900.^1, 2

The watch industry specialised in small watches, made with a fine division of labour among many firms, and mostly turned out inexpensive wristwatches. A local historian dates its good years to 1900–1914 and 1925–1939, when gold, silver and gold-plated cases from Pforzheim sold worldwide, and says the town, after long buying movements or parts from abroad, could make complete movements from 1932.^2, 3

In the Second World War the watch firms turned to armaments production. On the evening of February 23, 1945, a Royal Air Force raid destroyed most of the city and its industry; Stowa moved its production to Rheinfelden.^{1, 2, 3, 10}

After some years of crisis came a successful period from 1949, with mechanical watches and, from the 1970s, quartz movements. Then cheap quartz watches from Japan proved too strong a competitor, and in 1993 the last movement maker in Pforzheim closed while still turning out 18,000 quartz movements a day. The same historian says some Pforzheim firms mastered quartz technology but could not make it cheaply enough, and that a proposed merger of several makers came to nothing.^2, 3

The city now runs a technical museum of its jewellery and watch industry, in a former jewellery factory.³