Urofa
Uhren-Rohwerkefabrik AG ( UROFA ) was a manufacturer of clockworks in the Saxon city of Glashütte .
founding
On December 7, 1926, the Girozentrale Sachsen founded the company UROFA Aktiengesellschaft in Glashütte. Predecessor companies were the Glashütte Precision Watch Factory AG, which emerged from Ernst Kasiske's watch factory in 1904, as well as the cooperative successor company Deutsche Präzisionsuhrenfabrik eGmbH, founded after its closure due to the war. This had gone bankrupt in 1925. The Girozentrale Sachsen was the main creditor of the precision watch factory and in Ernst Kurtz had a capable man who turned the bankrupt estate into a modern factory for wristwatches. In parallel with UROFA, UFAG AG Glashütte (Uhrenfabrik AG) was founded, which was supposed to build finished wristwatches using UROFA raw works .
Both companies were managed in personal union, but were legally independent public limited companies. The machine park of the Biel- based Swiss watch factory "Emile Judith", which went bankrupt in 1925, was also bought and its former boss was immediately hired as production manager. The number of employees rose to 1,000 in the 1930s.
Production and sales
At UROFA, the Judith pocket watch movements were initially continued to be built and, over the course of time, numerous raw movements from the inventory of the precision watch factory were completed. The constructions of the Judith company were used to set up a rough production of wristwatch movements that could be used in ladies' and men's watches. The factories were continuously improved technically with the aim of having to buy fewer and fewer components in Switzerland and finally to achieve complete in-house production in Germany.
In the 1930s, UROFA brought new movements onto the market. They were based on Swiss clockwork designs. The UROFA ladies' watch caliber 54/541/542 is a replica of the Swiss Revue caliber 61 and the UROFA formwork caliber 58 (UROFA advertising name "Raumnutzwerk") is a replica of the Revue caliber 54.
Only about ten percent of the UROFA raw works were made into finished wristwatches at UFAG in Glashütte. The majority of the UROFA raw works were ordered by watch manufacturers based in the region around Pforzheim for their wristwatches.
Pilot's watches for the Air Force
In 1938, as part of the preparations for war, UROFA was classified as a "military production company" and was commissioned to develop and manufacture a wristwatch pilot's chronograph movement. This was the caliber number 59 and was from 1941 by the UFAG in the Tutima - pilot chronographs built and delivered to the Air Force. Civil production came to a standstill in the course of the war.
One day before the end of the war, Glashütte was bombed by Soviet planes and the production facilities were badly damaged. Kurtz fled to the American occupation zone in Franconia and built the watch factory Dr. Kurtz, which he later relocated to Ganderkesee near Bremen. The systems, machines, finished and semi-finished products left over in Glashütte fell as spoils of war to the Soviet Union and were taken to the First Moscow Watch Factory .
post war period
In 1945 the Soviet occupying forces allowed clockwork production to resume. The joint management of UROFA and UFAG, which already existed before 1945, was institutionalized for the first time with the establishment of a GbR of both companies called "Production Community Precis". The Precis did not acquire any further significance.
In 1945/46 it was very quickly possible to develop and produce the UROFA cal. 61, which was simply built according to Glashütte construction principles as a Plat plate factory. The Kal.62, a revised "space utilization mechanism", was added later. In 1951 UROFA was nationalized by the GDR without compensation and renamed VEB UROFA. At the end of 1951, VEB UROFA merged with the other major Glashütte watch manufacturers and component manufacturers in the newly founded VEB Glashütte watch company .
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
- Gerhard Claussen, Martin Häußermann, Bernd Schaarschmidt, Peter Braun: wristwatches special. Glashütte Original. Manufactory. Mechanics. Masterpieces. Heel, Königswinter 2006, ISBN 3-89880-572-7 .
- Werner Heinrich: Mechanical wristwatches from Glashütte 1950–1980. Movements, calibers, cases. Callwey, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7667-1719-1 .
- Kurt Herkner: Urofa and Tutima wristwatches. In: Writings of the Friends of Age Clocks. Volume 21, Ulm 1982, pp. 81-85.
Individual evidence
- ^ Precision pocket watch factory Ernst Kasiske 1897-1901. In: Deutsche Uhrmacher, accessed on September 1, 2015
- ↑ Urofa-UFAG. Glashütte archive
- ↑ 5 facts about Tutima Glashütte . Watchtime , February 23, 2018; accessed on July 26, 2018
- ^ The myth of the glassworks . German watchmaker, October 28, 2012
- ↑ Time with History - The Beginnings in the Heart of Watchmaking ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ History of the work caliber 59 after 1945
