Walter Lange (entrepreneur)

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Walter Lange (born July 29, 1924 in Dresden ; † January 17, 2017 in Ingolstadt ) was a German watchmaker and entrepreneur .

Life

Walter Lange was the great-grandson of the company's founder Ferdinand Adolph Lange (1815–1875) and re-founder of the luxury watch brand A. Lange & Söhne in Glashütte . His great-grandfather founded a watch manufacture for high-quality pocket watches in Glashütte in 1845 , which his son Friedrich Emil Lange (1849–1922) took over in 1875 with his brother Richard (1845–1932) after they had joined the company in 1868.

Walter Lange attended elementary school and began an apprenticeship as a watchmaker at the age of 16, following his family tradition. However, he had to start it in Karlstein in Austria in 1941 , because in Glashütte, where Ferdinand Adolph Lange established the reputation of German precision watchmaking on December 7, 1845, only master craftsman training was offered. Walter Lange was only able to finish his apprenticeship after the war at the watchmaking school in Glashütte with Alfred Helwig , because after a year and a half he was drafted into the military in 1942 at the age of 18 . Severely wounded in the leg, he returned from the Eastern Front across the Baltic Sea in Germany and was placed in a hospital ten kilometers from the Saxon glassworks.

From May 7th to 15th, 1945 he was on vacation with the family in Glashütte when, on May 8th, 1945 bombs destroyed the main production building. His father Rudolf Lange (1884–1954) and his brothers Otto and Gerhard have been running the factory since 1919. The family was expropriated on April 20, 1948 and the company was initially converted into the state-owned company (VEB) Lange and forcibly merged with other suppliers to form the VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB) on July 1, 1951 . After the expropriation, Lange's father and his brothers were no longer allowed to enter their own factory. On November 15, 1948, Lange fled to the West in order to avoid being forced to work in uranium mining . Lange went to the Baden clock and jewelry town of Pforzheim , where he met his wife Jutta, who also came from the Müglitztal near Glashütte.

From 1952 (trademark entry 1951), Walter Lange and his brother Ferdinand Adolph (II), who also fled in 1950, initially produced watches in Pforzheim under the name “A. Lange Pforzheim "" ALP "from purchased components. It was a medium-sized company with six employees in-house and three employees in the field. Ferdinand Adolph (II) ran the business, Walter was the workshop manager. They later had watches manufactured in Biel , Switzerland , which were called “Lange vorm. Glashütte ”were sold. In 1983 the watch wholesaler was closed. From 1968 Walter Lange worked as a sales representative for the jewelry industry and visited Glashütte for the first time in 1976. He kept in close contact with his cousin, the lampshade manufacturer Heinz Gutkaes in Kurort Hartha, among others .

The German reunification in 1990 made it possible to continue the family business. Walter Lange hoped to get his father's company transferred back. Since the Federal Compensation Act only applied to expropriations from the GDR era and the company was expropriated as early as 1948, a return was not possible. Lange founded Lange Uhren GmbH in Glashütte, reviving the legacy of his ancestors. On December 7, 1990, exactly 145 years to the day after A. Lange & Söhne was founded, he registered the brand again in Glashütte at the address of a former classmate. He started with the entrepreneur Günter Blümlein and 15 employees. In 1994 the "Lange 1" was presented. Most recently, he represented the company with around 770 employees worldwide, including around 650 in Glashütte, which has belonged to the Swiss luxury goods group Richemont , based in the canton of Geneva , since 2001 .

Walter Lange died on January 17, 2017 in a rehabilitation clinic after failing to recover from a fall four weeks earlier. The burial took place on January 27, 2017 in the family grave in the cemetery in Glashütte. His son Benjamin continues the family tradition.

Honors

In 1995, Lange became an honorary citizen of the city of Glashütte. In July 1998 he received the Saxon Order of Merit . In 2013, Lange received the Hommage à la Passion award for his life's work from the “Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie (FHH)” (Foundation for the Promotion of Fine Watchmaking) in Lausanne , Switzerland. In 2015 he received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Hommage à la Passion” and “Hommage au Talent” 2013 . Website of the "Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie (FHH)", November 13, 2013, accessed on January 18, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Long, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German watchmaker and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 2017
Place of death Ingolstadt