Mühle Glashütte

Mühle-Glashütte GmbH
legal form	Company with limited liability
founding	1868 (as Robert Mühle & Sohn )
Seat	Glashütte (Saxony) , Germany
Branch	Watch industry
Website	www.muehle-glashuette.de

The company Mühle Glashütte is a German manufacturer of nautical instruments , measuring devices, ship and wristwatches based in Glashütte (Saxony) . The company changed its name and legal form several times over the years. Today the company is run by descendants of the company founder under the company name Mühle-Glashütte GmbH nautical instruments and precision mechanics .

Company history

The company's advertising brochure from the 1920s

1868-1945

The company was founded in 1868 by Robert Mühle under the name Robert Mühle & Sohn . The company founder was born in Lauenstein in 1841 and completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker in the watch manufacture of Karl Moritz Großmann . After completing his apprenticeship, he went into business for himself and founded his own company. Precision measuring devices were manufactured for the Glashütte watch industry and the German watchmaking school in Glashütte . As a specialist manufacturer, Robert Mühle & Sohn belonged to the Glashütte publishing system initiated by Ferdinand Adolph Lange , which provided for the division of watch production into specific, narrowly defined work areas and the division of the individual production stages among specialists. Mühle was involved in this concept as a manufacturer of tenths, twentieth and fiftieth dimensions, micrometers, wheel dimensions, fiber dimensions, balance balancing machines and various emery tools.

Under the leadership of his sons Paul, Alfred and Max Mühle, the company expanded its product range. Since the 1920s, measuring and display instruments for vehicles such as car clocks, speedometers and rev counters have also been manufactured by “Rob. Mühle & Sohn ”. These came not only in brand automobiles Horch , Maybach and DKW used, including BMW motorbikes were fitted with mill-tachometers. As early as January 14, 1920, the company Robert Mühle & Sohn and two other manufacturers formed the United Glashütte Calculating Machine Factory, Tachometer- und Feinmechanische Werke Arthur Burkhardt & Cie. - "Saxonia" Schumann & Cie.- Robert Mühle & Sohn merged.

During the Second World War , speedometers and car clocks were made by “Rob. Mühle & Sohn ”was used in tanks and other motorized vehicles of the German Wehrmacht . As a technologically highly developed company, the family business, like the other Glashütte watch and precision equipment manufacturers, was dismantled at the end of the war on the orders of the Soviet occupying forces, and most of the machines, tools and construction documents were transported to the Soviet Union. The remainder of the company was incorporated into Zeiss-Werke Jena under the name "Messtechnik Glashütte" .

1945–1990

In December 1945, Hans Mühle, a grandson of the company founder, succeeded in rebuilding the company. Under the new name of Hans Mühle Glashütte , pressure and temperature measuring devices as well as running gears and escapements were produced for the Glashütte watch industry, which is currently being rebuilt.

After the death of his father, Hans-Jürgen Mühle (* 1941) took over the management of the private company in 1970. In 1972 the family business was forcibly nationalized as part of the transfer of all remaining private companies in the GDR . The Mühle company, which had become public property , was incorporated into the VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB) in 1980 . However, Hans-Jürgen Mühle continued to work in the company, initially as sales manager, and from 1990 as one of five managing directors at GUB.

1990 – today

Mühle wrist watch

In the course of the privatization of the formerly state-owned companies of the GDR, fundamental structural changes in the watch industry also occurred in Glashütte after the reunification of Germany . The formerly state-owned VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB) became Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH .

In 1994 Hans-Jürgen Mühle left this GmbH and re-registered the family business of his ancestors under the name Mühle-Glashütte GmbH nautical instruments and precision mechanics as an independent company. At first only professional marine chronometers, ship clocks and other nautical instruments such as barometers or hygrometers were produced, which is still reflected in the current company name.

In 1996 production was expanded to include automatic wristwatches based on Swiss factories , mainly from the manufacturers ETA and Valjoux . Today this forms the core business of Mühle-Glashütte. In 2000, Hans-Jürgen Mühle's son Thilo Mühle (* 1968) joined the family business.

In 2005 a legal dispute broke out with the watch manufacturer Nomos Glashütte as to whether the work on the watch mechanisms complied with the so-called “Glashütte rule”, ie 50 percent of the added value must be achieved in Glashütte. The Mühle company was accused of wrongly using the "Glashütte" designation of origin, as the clockworks used in the Mühle watches were not manufactured on site, but purchased. In the course of this legal dispute, Mühle was initially sentenced to a contractual penalty of 63 million euros and had to file for bankruptcy in 2007 .

Thanks to an insolvency plan , the insolvency proceedings were discontinued in March 2008. After a new judicial decision and an agreement with the competitor Nomos, Mühle is allowed to continue to use the indication “Glashütte” in the name, after it has been determined that all the watches sold now meet the requirements for the designation of origin.

Watch models

Today, the Mühle company manufactures steel watches in the medium price segment. There are four product lines: nautical wristwatches, classic hand-wound watches, sporty instrument watches and limited special editions.

literature

Hans-Heinrich Schmid : "Lexicon of the German watch industry 1850 - 1980: company addresses, production program, company logos, brand names, company histories." (3rd expanded edition 2017); Editor: German Society for Chronometry eV; ISBN 978-3-941539-92-1