The history of Glashütte Original

In the late of nineteenth Century, the development of Glashütte horological industry is fiery and bitter. At that time all Germany's most famous watches masters, like JuliusAssmann, AdolfSchneider, LudwigStrasser and GustavRohde and so on were getting together to set up factories to produce watches and clocks. In addition, other factories of related parts industry such as watch case, pointer, the balance wheel have been built, which established profound development base of horological industry, Glashütte finally developed into the mainstay of German precision watches industry. its table clock, desk clock, pocket watch, wrist watch and navigation instruments, industrial instruments were sold in Germany, Europe and even as far as China.

 

The production of the most sophisticated and most practical clocks is the common goal of Glashütte all Clockmakers, so what they pursued is not the manufacture of complicated watches, but the development of durable precision clocks. They make efforts to improve error rates of watches and clocks, and this principle is still insisted by Glashütte Clockmaker.

 

In 1920, the global economic crisis and the first World War had a severe blow to Glashütte's watch industry, but German strong national character made it rallied sharply in short time, so there is no great influence for local watch industry. The real strike for Glashütte is the end of the Second World War; due to the local area was thought by the allies as the base of producing watches and instruments for Nazi and suffered heavy bombing; many tasks factory was razed. After the war,  Glashütte belonged to socialism East Germany, while the Soviet troops marched in and transported the most remnant watch making equipment to the Soviet union.

 

Between 1945 and 1951, Glashütte region still remained seven factories, including A.lange&sohne, FelixEstler, Metechnik, Liwos, Feintechnik, Uhren-Rohwerke-FabrikGlashutte and UhrenfabrikGlashutte etc. By 1951, authorities in order to develop the socialist economy, the East German combined Glashütte’s seven clock factories into the state enterprise called VEB Glashutter Uhren betriebe (GUB).

 

In the following decades, Glashütte was almost completely isolated with the western world; watch factory has 2000 employees; their main task was every year producing one hundred thousand simple and practical watch for Eastern Bloc countries. In 1989, the Berlin wall was demolished. In 1990, East and West Germany achieved reunification; the surprised history change also has brought great change for Glashütte's watchmaking.