A. Lange & Söhne
Wilhelm SCHMID
Wilhelm Schmid
Wilhelm SCHMID
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Following the vision of Ferdinand Adolph Lange to build the world’s best watches, A. Lange & Söhne strives for ultimate precision and explores new avenues in order to advance the art of fine watchmaking.

A. Lange & Söhne creates outstanding mechanical timepieces that feature challenging complications and follow a clear and classical design line. Innovative engineering skills and traditional craftsmanship at the highest level guarantee a state-of-the-art calibre design with meticulously hand-finished movements and utmost mechanical precision.

Dresden watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange laid the cornerstone of Saxony’s precision watchmaking industry when he established his manufactory in 1845. His precious pocket watches remain highly coveted among collectors all over the world. The company was expropriated after the Second World War, and the name A. Lange & Söhne nearly vanished. But in 1990, Walter Lange, Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s great-grandson, ventured to start over again. Today, Lange crafts only a few thousand wristwatches, mainly in gold or platinum, per year. They are endowed exclusively with proprietary movements that are lavishly decorated and twice assembled by hand. With 70 manufacture calibres developed since 1990, A. Lange & Söhne has secured a top-tier position among the world’s finest watch brands. Its greatest successes include brand icons such as the LANGE 1, the first regularly produced wristwatch with an outsize date, and the ZEITWERK, with its precisely jumping numerals. Extraordinary complications such as the ZEITWERK MINUTE REPEATER, the TRIPLE SPLIT and the so far most complicated model, the GRAND COMPLICATION, introduced in 2013 in a limited edition of six, represent what the manufactory always strives for: to drive the traditional art of watchmaking to ever-new heights. The sporty yet elegant ODYSSEUS, introduced in 2019, marked the start of a new chapter for A. Lange & Söhne.

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Ferdinand A. Lange

A Lange & Söhne has among the more storied horological histories around, one that begins with the entrepreneurial and socially conscious Ferdinand Adolph Lange. Born in 1815 in Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, Ferdinand A. Lange would pioneer watchmaking in the region after first catching the horological bug as a 15-year-old apprentice. By 30 he set out to establish a watchmaking trade in the impoverished city of Glashütte, with records from the 1840s showing how he had secured a bank loan where he was then free to train apprentices and buy tools. By 1868 his sons Richard Lange and Emil had joined the company, officially establishing the name A Lange & Sohne.

Walter Lange

The great-grandson of Ferdinand A. Lange, Walter Lange was the modern-day legend of the A Lange & Söhne house. He was among the founding fathers behind establishing Glashütte as an illustrious watchmaking centre to rival that of Switzerland. After serving in the second world war, Walter Lange returned to Glashütte but found he was not free to continue his family’s legacy: 1948 saw the dispossession of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Eastern Germany. Only some 40 years later in 1990 was Walter Lange, along with his renowned manager Gunther Blumlein, able to relaunch his family’s company. In 1994, the 66-year-old Lange presented his first four prototypes to the public, which retailers and the press loved and couldn't help but buy up enthusiastically.

Haute horology

Chic understatement with design free of any fuss may be the A Lange & Söhne signature, but its complicated watches, from chrongraph to perpetual calendar creations, are just as eye-catching - and among the most mechanically superior watches one can buy. Take the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar Handwerkskunst (price around €300,000), whose movement boasts functions galore including time indicated in hours, minutes and subsidiary seconds, perpetual calendar with moon phase and leap year and a rattrapante chronograph with minute counter. Or consider the gorgeous rose gold Double Split, the first and only chronograph with a double-rattrapante function and featuring two pairs of stopwatch hands for time comparisons, lap time and reference-value measurements. The house’s most complicated watch is the rose gold Grand Complication itself, packed with a grande sonnerie, perpetual calendar and split seconds chronograph with flying seconds. And for more chronograph purists, there is the clear-cut 1815 Chronograph that’s among the most accurate one can buy today (price around $50,000), thanks to a jumping minute counter and flyback function.