A. Lange & Söhne - Double Anniversary
Worldtempus - 8 December 2010
On December 7, Walter Lange once again spoke of the luck he feels has followed him throughout his life and career. The occasion of his public speech was an important one: he and the brand named for his family celebrated 20 years to the day since the modern A. Lange & Söhne marque was founded. The brand simultaneously celebrated the 165th anniversary of the founding of the Glashutte watch industry and that of A. Lange & Söhne—both of which were founded on December 7, 1845 by Ferdinand Adolph Lange.
The December 6 evening celebration, which took place in the Dresden castle housing the legendary Green Vault, was attended not only by global press and some of Europe's most important retailers, but also German politicians such as Saxony's retired minister president and former Federal Assembly president Kurt Biedenkopf and Richemont manager Jerôme Lambert. This royal venue is the same one in which the very first introduction of Lange wristwatches took place in 1994 as masterminded by Walter Lange and Gunter Blumlein, the legendary manager responsible for the continued success of not only Lange but also IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre. Blumlein, whose legacy continues to bear horological fruit, unfortunately passed away in 2001.
The brand celebrated its 165-year history with a world tour of the Homage to F.A. Lange collection in honey-colored gold with stops in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing among other cities. The December celebration in Dresden represented the final stop of the exhibition, which included the most complicated pocket watch A. Lange & Söhne ever manufactured. This fully restored beauty accompanied the modern anniversary collection on the world tour.
The anniversary celebration coincidentally also represented the debut of the brand's new CEO, Wilhelm Schmid, who will officially start work in Glashutte at the beginning of January, as well as the awarding of a new prize: A. Lange & Söhne's Young Talent Award for a next generation of watchmakers. Eight finalists from a total of eighty entrants from 30 watchmaking schools from around the world vied for the winning 10,000 euro stipend by creating an equation-of-time watch on a base ETA Unitas 6498 movement. The competition was judged by a competent jury that included Walter Lange. The winner was clearly identified as 20-year-old Felix Reppe, a student at Glashutte's own school of watchmaking, who provided the most competent solution settable to the day (the other entries were only settable to the month).