GLASHÜTTE’S NEXT FAMOUS FIVE

Nothing happens in a vacuum, so it might seem odd to credit one man with turning the sleepy German village of Glashütte into a Teutonic equivalent of Neuchâtel. One would prefer to attribute this to a series of events, a “perfect storm” as it were, but the late Günter Blümlein deserves recognition above all others for reviving German watchmaking and elevating it to a level on a par with the Swiss, for quality if not yet quantity.

It was Blümlein who, with Walter Lange, masterminded the rebirth of A. Lange & Söhne in the mid-1990s. As modern horological developments go, it was an event that surely served as the catalyst for breathing new life into a region which had suffered for a half-century under stifling Communist rule. Instantly alerting the then-burgeoning watch community to the forgotten horological riches of the area, Lange’s phenomenal – and rapid – success was followed by the return of Glashütte Original.

In their