165 Years – Homage to F. A. Lange Collection/en

165 Years – Homage to F. A. Lange Collection
Three exceptional timepieces demonstrate the capabilities of A. Lange & Söhne

other languages: de

Glashütte, January 2010

With a special collection of exceptional complications, A. Lange & Söhne commemorates the spiritual legacy of the founder of Germany’s precision watchmaking industry. Presented in a novel gold alloy of hitherto unmatched hardness, the trilogy consisting of the TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite”, the LANGE 1 TOURBILLON, and the 1815 MOONPHASE manifests the horological heritage of Ferdinand Adolph Lange enriched with contemporary ingenuity and artisanal virtuosity.

It was in 1845 when Ferdinand Adolph Lange moved from the splendour of palatial Dresden to the remote and impoverished mining town of Glashütte to make his dream of the ideal watch manufactory come true. He did it with the intention of crafting the world’s finest timepieces. Aware of the fact that today’s innovation is tomorrow’s standard, he evolved to become a staunch reformist to whom precision watchmaking owes numerous inventions and enhancements. For instance, he was among the first members of his guild to adopt metric units of measurement and abandon the then prevalent but complicated Parisian ligne system. His work was characterised by the quest for supreme precision. The drafts for mechanisms of his own design, even the most complicated ones, were exemplary as regards clarity of engineering and layout. His values remain the benchmark that inspires the work of all Lange employees.

The “165 Years – Homage to F.A. Lange” anniversary collection pays tribute to the founder of Germany’s precision watchmaking industry and to the trailblazing creations devised in his manufactory: they are what kept the legend alive for four generations of the watchmaking dynasty in the first place. One of them is the Grand Complication with the serial number 42500, initiated by Emil Lange, the second son of the founder. Made in 1902, its Louis XVI case in 18-carat gold accommodates a chiming mechanism with a grand strike and a small strike, a minute repeater, a split-seconds chronograph with a minute counter and flying seconds, as well as a perpetual calendar with a moon-phase display. This one-of-a-kind watch, exceptional in every respect, was sent to Lange in a seriously corroded condition. Many of the 833 parts had to be painstakingly refashioned by specialists in the restoration workshop. But after several years of meticulous repair work, all components of the complicated mechanism work again – as perfectly as more than a hundred years ago.

Trilogy of values: three horological milestones

With three impressive timekeeping instruments that give a new face to the enduring watchmaking tradition of the Lange family as regards technical and aesthetic perfection, Lange’s 21st-century watchmakers salute the spiritual legacy of their great mentor. The capabilities of the manufactory are expressed by all three models with a novel case metal developed exclusively for Lange. With a Vickers hardness of over 300, the 18-carat honey-coloured gold exclusively developed for Lange is about twice as hard as other gold alloys. Breathing beneath the hand-engraved balance cock made of the same material is a balance spring developed and manufactured in-house. It symbolises the innovative energy with which every Lange watch is endowed. A guilloched solidgold dial and a sunburst finish on the three-quarter plate of the 1815 MOONPHASE and the crown wheel cock of the LANGE 1 TOURBILLON allude to the proud ancestral artisanship of the family tradition. A look at all three watches together – and at the concepts they embody – reaffirms Lange’s axiomatic claim “state-of-the-art tradition”. It lives in the Lange pocket watches of old as fervently as in the oeuvres crafted by today’s master watchmakers.

An escalation of superlatives: the TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite”

In 2005, A. Lange & Söhne presented a grand complication that established a new benchmark in precision watchmaking: the TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite”. It was the first one-minute tourbillon in a wristwatch format with a fusée-and-chain transmission as well as an additional rattrapante chronograph. Because of the complexity of the mechanism, it was possible to craft only one watch per month, so the last timepiece of the first partial edition of 51 platinum models was only just delivered a few weeks ago. The coming of a second partial edition of 50 watches in a yet-to-be-defined gold version was announced on the occasion of the original debut. The TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite” which is now being presented in honour of Ferdinand Adolph Lange also has a case made of the new, harder gold. And it, too, embodies Lange’s ambition to build the world’s finest watches. At the same time, it proves that even a horological superlative can be taken to a new, higher level.