IWC - Kurt Klaus Remembers
WORLDTEMPUS - 2 January 2013
At the ripe old age of 78, Kurt Klaus still makes a wonderful impression on those around him: impeccably dressed, beautiful manners, and the most interesting conversation a horological nut could ever wish for. This is what you get when you have the pleasure of spending an afternoon with one of the true masters emerging from the ashes of the quartz crisis and leading one into the golden sun of the mechanical renaissance.
In fact, Klaus was one of the best proponents of the mechanical renaissance. Beginning at IWC in 1957 under Albert Pellaton, Klaus felt at the time that he had a lot to learn fresh out of watchmaking school in Solothurn and after a stint at Eterna. "Pellaton was Mr. IWC," Klaus explained. "He was technical director, movement designer, inventor, and production head all in one." Klaus then went on to explain that in those days, the main objective of not only IWC, but watchmaking in general, in designing and producing movements was rate precision.
In the second half of the 1970s, IWC went from around 350 employees to about 100 - which was not uncommon for any Swiss watchmaking firm at this time. The company was close to bankruptcy, but survived in part by making solid silver model cars for Porsche and chassis for airplanes in addition to a few watches and a four-day work week for the remaining employees.
It was during this time that Klaus began coming into the workshop on the fifth day, which he had off due to cost-saving measures, to try out some ideas for movements that he had. Pellaton had passed away, and the company was basically without technical direction. You see, Klaus was working on a calendar movement for a pocket watch. This represented not only the first movement design Klaus had undertaken by himself, it was also the first complicated watch produced by IWC. This calendar with moon phase ended up being introduced at the Basel Fair of 1976 to such acclaim that Klaus was asked to produce 100 of them. The "Moon Phase Watch," as it came to be known, was introduced in the midst of high-tech quartz having taken the lead, and by the second day of the fair all 100 had been ordered, Klaus related. "For me, this actually represented the renaissance of the mechanical watch."
This pocket watch was the basis for the Da Vinci perpetual calendar wristwatch, which appeared on the scene in 1985. "This was something totally new," he explained, "something that the quartz movement could not yet do. He went on to explain that he found the mechanical renaissance an "adventurous time," in which one needed new ideas in order to make a difference. The first three prototypes made for the Basel Fair in 1986 were handmade by his own two hands. He also cites the creative ideas and b sales skills of Hannes Pantli, now a member of the board of directors and its spokesman, as the reason that IWC was able to survive during this time of crisis. "I don't know how we would have survived without him," Klaus wistfully says, "he got everything out to the people who were looking for it."
At some point this wonderful afternoon had to draw to a close, and so it was with a pang of sorrow that I got back on the train to go home…certain, however, that I would soon be back to Schaffhausen.
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