The Lange 1 – A Chalice of Hope & Faith
The Lange 1 – A Chalice of Hope & Faith
Not for a Single Second
It was a building. But it was also a monument to his faith, to his unyielding, ceaselessly indefatigable belief that one day his beloved country would be united as one single nation. That he died just four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when people on both sides of the wall tore down the concrete that had separated them for 10,316 days, made Axel Springer’s crusade to reunify Germany, even more touching. That he did so even when it was not fashionable and continued even when he was made to seem a quixotic fool on a doomed mission, and that he gave his whole life to this cause, is to me what makes him so admirable.
When I first visited Berlin, my friend, the Michelin-starred chef Tim Raue, brought me to Springer’s 20-storey headquarters and explained that Springer, who created Europe’s greatest publishing empire, could have built this shimmering edifice anywhere. But his chosen location was Kreuzberg, right next to the Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany. Why? Says Raue, “Because he wanted his building to be a symbol to East Germany that he believed one day we would be reunified as one country. He wanted his headquarters to be a symbol of freedom and a reminder of hope to Soviet-ruled Berlin and to all of East Germany. He chose Kreuzberg because he knew that one day when the Berlin Wall fell, as he knew it inevitably must, his headquarters would be in the center of a reunified city and country made whole again.”
In 1942, at the age of 18, Lange graduated from watchmaking school and returned to Germany to find his country amid the throes of war. He was seconded to the army, sent to the Russian Front where, in 1945, he was shot in the leg and laid in agony on a battlefield all night, too scared to move. At that moment, he thought he would actually perish. He was eventually discovered and sent home via the Baltic Sea. Slowly, in the care of his family, he recuperated. Even better, word had spread that the war was finally coming to an end. His heart thus filled with hope, and on the very last day of the Second World War in Europe, Lange made his way to his family’s Glashütte watch factory to finally begin his journey as a watchmaker. He arrived just a few hours before the ceasefire was announced but then, incredibly, was forced to watch as his factory’s main building was decimated by one of the very last bombing raids over Europe.
Walter Lange and the Post-War Years
Then, a miraculous thing happened. Walter Lange was 66 years old and a pensioner living a quiet life of dignified retirement. In 1987, he watched the American president Ronald Reagan stand beside the Berlin Wall and say to the general secretary of the Communist Party, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Even more incredibly, in 1989, he watched again on television as the Berlin Wall fell. He couldn’t believe it. Germany had been reunified. It had been made whole. Then out of the blue, in the twilight of his years, Walter Lange received the single most important telephone call of his life. It was from an individual named Günter Blümlein. By the time he reached out to Walter Lange, Günter Blümlein had already assured his position in watchmaking’s Valhalla as one of the greatest leaders the industry had ever known. He had been hand-selected by his employer, VDO Schindling AG, to revive two failing watch brands, IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre. Blümlein’s brilliance was to identify the core identity of each brand and extract and build on it to create appeal and excitement. IWC was a pragmatic tool watch with a reputation for reliability and accuracy. He transformed it into a brand synonymous with functional innovation. Every complication that existed, from the split seconds chronograph to the perpetual calendar to the minute repeater, IWC could do it better, more reliably and more affordably. Jaeger-LeCoultre had become relegated to producing movements for other brands, while its own models languished in obscurity. Blümlein focused on the unique swivel case Reverso and re-elevated it in status to that of an icon, now replete with a larger case and even complicated movements.
Said Walter Lange, “The 7th of December 1990 was one of the greatest days of my life. I registered the brand using a borrowed address of a former classmate at our primary school in Glashütte.” But the re-establishment of A. Lange & Söhne was not without its challenges. Chief amongst these was negotiating the return of the confiscated Lange domain and factory. Walter Lange had made progress with the Treuhand Trust Agency when, incredibly, its chairman Detlev Rohwedder was shot dead in his home. This delayed the repurchase of the Lange factory for almost a decade. In the meantime, Lange and Blümlein had a name and a dream, but what they needed was a watch unlike anything the world had ever seen.
The Reinvention of A. Lange & Söhne
First amongst these was the da Vinci of Schaffhausen himself, Kurt Klaus. He was joined by Reinhard Meis and, of course, Blümlein and Lange. My friend, journalist Gisbert Brunner, interviewed Blümlein shortly after the launch of the Lange 1 in 1994 and asked if he considered the first modern A. Lange & Söhne collection a tribute to a great, albeit long ago, past. Blümlein’s answer was direct, “Absolutely not. The 1994 A. Lange & Söhne wristwatches and all upcoming models are anything but epigones of watchmaking legends.” He was clear that the Lange 1 was an all-new, entirely contemporary design that paid tribute to key elements of Lange’s past and to German watchmaking history, but without in any way replicating it. You see, to consider the Lange 1 backward-looking and charmingly nostalgic in its quotation of Lange’s past is to misunderstand it altogether. Because the Lange 1 is one of the most fearlessly original and modern watches ever created. Its basic design embraces an apparent eccentricity in layout belied by a slavish devotion to harmony, proportion and precision, which, to be honest, could only be created by two extraordinary Germans at the very height of their creative power. Above all, it is absolutely unique and game changing.
The Fearlessly Original Lange 1
To understand why the Lange 1’s dial evokes such a wonderfully pleasing sense of geometric harmony, let’s study the underlying symmetry that belies the apparent chaos. The hour and minute cannon pinion, that of the power reserve, that of the seconds, and the exact center of the frame dividing the two digits in the big date, all align to form an equilateral triangle. This mid-point of the date frame also aligns perfectly with the top of the Roman 12 index, while the bottom of the Roman six index aligns perfectly with the pinion of the seconds hand. The cannon pinion of the hours and minutes aligns perfectly with that of the power reserve hand. The distance from both of these pinions to the perimeter of the dial closest to them is identical. Once you realize that everywhere you look geometric harmony abounds, the result places you in a trance of bucolic genuflection; you feel that all is well in the world, as if the sense of order in the dial has permeated and enveloped your entire being.
The case of the Lange 1 is one of the most beautiful contemporary designs in recent memory. This has very much to do with the watch’s wonderful lugs, which are notched, beveled, flared and highly sensual. This creates an incredible dynamic tension with a dial that can feel a bit Bauhaus-like in terms of its commitment to the functional display of information. I love this. It reminds me of the secret to extraordinary wines such as the Meursaults of Coche-Dury, which similarly display an amazing dynamic tension between fruit and laser-sharp acidity. This push-and-pull effect manifests on your palette as a sense of length that practically vibrates with intensity. This is the same as the sensually charged lugs of the Lange 1, seen against the cool harmonic beauty of the dial and case. What is known is that Günter Blümlein was behind these lugs. So passionate and specific about them was he that, according to Langepedia, he is known to have notched and beveled the lugs on the brass prototype himself. The case measures 38.5mm in diameter by 9.8mm in thickness, which made it one of the first substantial sized dress watches of the ’90s, though the alternating use of polished and brushed finishes for the bezel, mid case and caseback makes the Lange 1 feel much thinner.
The Caliber L901.0
As I had earlier mentioned, you had some of watchmaking’s greatest minds behind the development of the watch. Kurt Klaus explains, “The big date mechanism was something that Blümlein was working on at Jaeger-LeCoultre. But then he and Herr Lange realized that there is a five-minute clock in the Semper Opera House in Dresden that looks very similar. Even better, the clock was created by a watchmaker named Gutkaes, whom Adolph Lange apprenticed with. For Blümlein, this was the perfect rationale to have this date indicator in the Lange 1.”
When asked who came up with the idea of this being the first modern twin-barreled movement, as explained by the word “Doppelfederhaus” on the dial, Klaus recalls, “This was Walter Lange. He saw that there was enough space in the movement and suggested this, as Lange used to make pocket watches with this technical feature.” All of these elements contributed to the in-house caliber L901.0 that was the stuff of legends upon its unveiling. The movement is also the one element of the watch where you can see charmingly historic Saxon watchmaking style details, such as a swan neck regulator, a hand-engraved balance cock, gold chatons for the rubies that are held in place by blued screws and a three-quarter plate. When asked by Singaporean journalist Peter Chong if these elements seemed a little anachronistic, Blümlein’s response was, “A function may be anachronistic but beauty never is — does the three-quarter plate not look nice?” Based on this, it was clear Blümlein understood that, in the context of the late 20th century, a mechanical watch’s primary function was to impart emotion, and its greatest asset for doing so was beauty.