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A Visit to A. Lange & Söhne (Part 2)Posted by Jack Forster
Well, file this under “better late than never!” Here’s Part 2 (at long last) of my visit to A. Lange & Söhne. My apologies to everyone for the long delay.
Part 1 brought us to the Lange manufactory in Glashütte, and we finished with a visit to the facilities where Lange & Söhne creates its in-house hairsprings. We continued our visit with a tour of the original Lange & Söhne building. 
The building was actually constructed by Ferdinand Lange in 1873, and when Lange & Söhne was re-established it was owned (I believe) by the municipality of Glashütte, which did not at the time want to sell it back to Lange & Söhne. However, in 2000, the original building (which served the Lange family as both home and watchmaking center until 1948) was finally purchased by Lange & Söhne. 
Street sign on the corner of the building, just in case you have any doubts as to where you are  .
Inside are a number of different facilities and offices, one of which is a room devoted to the restoration of pocket watches. There was no work in progress at the time of our visit, but we had an opportunity to view some of the tools, including this 19th century rose engine, used for creating guilloche engraving. (I’ve written for many years that no rose engines have been made since the 2nd World War but have recently learned, as a matter of interest, that in fact a gentleman named Fred Armbruster is now making rose engines based on the Holzapffel rose engine, as reported by a letter to the editor in last April’s issue of WatchTime magazine. See, it pays to read the competition .) The binocular microscope is used by the engraver to watch the work in progress. The engraver directs the cutting tool against the workpiece by hand and has to maintain exactly the right degree of pressure to produce good work, and it requires not only excellent concentration and manual dexterity, but also many years of trial-and-error practice to make one an expert.
Samples of engine turning. 
Ferdinand Lange was extremely interested in chronometry and one of the expressions of his fascination is the fact that the Lange mansion was constructed around an enormous high precision pendulum clock, which has a pendulum three stories long (this is the uppermost part of the clock, on the third floor of the mansion; the bob is in the basement!) The clock actually sat in pieces in the attic for many years before finally being reconstructed and set running again. I assume that it was dismantled sometime around 1948 as one of the consequences of the expropriation and probably re-assembled sometime within the last ten years, but I’m not a hundred per cent sure. 
This is the escapement and remontoire d’egalite –the escape wheel and upside down anchor escapement are visible in front and the remontoir behind. The whole thing is very hypnotic to watch and certainly it’s the biggest pendulum clock I’ve ever seen in person! 
The pendulum also is the master clock controlling the dial of this clock face on the outside of the manufactory. 
This was one of the most exciting parts of the tour, at least for a cranky old retro-grouch like yours truly: the Lange & Söhne watch and clock museum. Currently, the museum houses highlights of the watch and clock collection from the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon from the Zwinger Palace (about which more later) in Dresden. I felt like a kid in a candy store. The collection as you might imagine showcases the very long history of watch and clock making in Germany and there is an especial emphasis on the work of Saxon watchmakers. 
This is a lovely “form” watch in the shape of a crucifix; a not uncommon design in the 17th century (to which period the exhibition catalogue dates this watch) although form watches became gradually less common as watchmaking transitioned from the creation of expensive and relatively inaccurate ornaments to pragmatic scientific instruments. 
Watch with full plate, chain and fuseé construction. The balance cock is the elaborately pierced and chased disk on the movement –this is a pretty classic example of movement architecture in the 18th century. 
This looked to me like one of the older watches in the entire collection –the very tall fuseé cone and hexagonal plates could be from as early as the early 17th century. Looks like it was designed to fit into the table clock case behind it. 
Table clock case. Somebody who is a real expert on these things could probably get it dated to within 25 years or so based on the movement architecture and design of the dial. 
This was a really, really exciting piece to see –it’s an early 17th century clock (the catalogue dates it to around 1625) by none other than Jost Bürgi (1552-1632), one of the most famous of the early watch and clockmakers. Bürgi was Swiss but spent much of his professional life in the courts of Prague and Kassel, in Saxony, where he made clocks and astronomical instruments for William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, also known as William the Wise. Bürgi made many experiments with the verge escapement and created the so-called “cross-beat” verge escapement, which was an attempt to improve on the inherently rather poor geometry of the verge escapement by using two mechanically linked foliots, or balance arms –a not entirely successful but nonetheless important early attempt to create a high precision clock. Bürgi is also credited with inventing the constant force device known as the remontoire d’egalite (this clock contains a remontoire as well) and he was a talented mathematician as well, inventing logarithms at about the same time as the Englishman John Napier (Napier however was the first to publish his work.) 
This alone was worth traveling all the way to Germany to see. If you’re interested in the history of horology, you can’t help but find this a huge thrill –the two rods topped with little stylized angels are the two foliots, which you can see in the picture above and in close up below. 
This clock, by the way, in addition to being of enormous historic importance is also extremely valuable. Its assessed value exceeds that of the entire rest of the collection put together, and it would be the crown jewel of any serious private collection. Thanks to Lange & Söhne for the chance to see it and photograph it! By now we had been at the manufactory for several hours and it was time to take a break for lunch, and then head back to Dresden for an afternoon of playing tourist. As I mentioned in the first part of this report, I’d never been to Dresden before although I was vaguely familiar with some of its history. I knew of Dresden primarily because of the tragic firebombing which devastated the Old City at the end of the Second World War and took tens of thousands of lives. While it was unquestionably a defining moment in the history of the city there is, of course, much more to Dresden than this unquestionably horrific disaster. Dresden was, and is, one of the most important cultural and artistic centers of Europe and was renowned especially for its Baroque architecture. Some of the most remarkable examples were constructed during the reign of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733m and he really was strong; he used to like to impress his court by breaking horseshoes with his bare hands) and who was both a rather ruthless despot, and a shrewd statesman who was a lifelong patron of the arts. Perhaps "ruthless" is a little unfair --it was certainly a time when to survive politically, you had to be as rough as those around you, and Augustus the Strong clearly concluded pretty early on in life that if it's a dog-eat-dog world, you might as well be a big dog .
From the center of the Old City you can see many of the most important examples of Baroque architecture in Dresden. Above, to the left, is the Katholische Hofkirche, or Catholic Church of the Royal Court of Saxony –Augustus the Strong converted to Roman Catholicism, which was a condition of his being elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but he seems to have taken his conversion quite seriously, at least if the architecture he commissioned is any evidence! To the right is the Royal Palace, with its famous tower clock –the rank of clockmaker to the court was a royal appointment, and Ferdinand Lange was apprenticed to one of the best known, Johann Gutkaes, who would have lived in the clock tower itself while in residence as he would have been responsible for the tower clock. 
The Semper Opera House, which houses the famous five minute digital clock created by Lange and Gutkaes. 
The sculpture atop the entrance depicts Bacchus, holding the thyrsus, or staff (a stalk of giant fennel topped with a pine cone) with which he is traditionally depicted, with a Maenad riding shotgun. 
Equestrian statue of Augustus the Strong. Behind is the Zwinger, a palace built by Augustus the Strong which was intended to rival Versailles, and which doesn’t do a bad job of it. The Zwinger (the name derives from the German word for the outer ward of a castle) is built on the site of the old city fortress, but is rather clearly designed to impress with its go-to-hell opulence rather than function as a fortification. 
We walked up a series of wide marble steps that led up over the outer walls of the Zwinger and into the orangerie which forms a part of its interior. There were putti everywhere and lots of satyrs, silenuses (sileni?) and so on. In fact in the Zwinger you can’t swing a stick without hitting a maenad, a satyr, or a putti –Augustus the Strong’s taste clearly ran to the ornamental, to put it mildly, and Europe was not going through a period of restraint in architectural taste at the time anyhow. 
The whole thing was inaugurated just in time for the wedding party that celebrated the nuptials of Augustus’ son to the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. The party went on for five weeks. The Zwinger was fantastically expensive to construct as you might imagine –we did some rough cocktail napkin calculations and I don’t remember the exact cost but it was something like a couple of Ohio class nuclear submarines. Still, those are obsolete in a decade or two, as Lange’s Christian Englebrecht pointed out, and the Zwinger is still impressing awestruck yokels like me nearly three hundred years after its inauguration (1719) so y’all can make up your own minds which is the better investment  .
We finished our walking tour of Dresden outside the Dresdner Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) which was almost totally demolished by the 1945 bombing raid but which has since been meticulously restored. To give an idea of the amount of work involved here is a Wikipedia Commons file image of the ruins in 1991: 
The gilded orb and cross atop the Frauenkirche were made by Alan Smith, a British goldsmith whose father was a member of the British aircrews who participated in the 1945 firebombing. As a gesture of kinship and reconciliation it’s extraordinarily moving to see. Dresden and the English city of Coventry, whose cathedral was destroyed by German bombers during the Second World War, are also now sister cities. The reconstruction of the Frauenkirche made use of as many fragments of the original building as possible which are clearly visible, as they’re much darker than the newer stone thanks to both weathering and fire damage. Finally, we visited the Lange boutique in Dresden! No photos of the exterior, unfortunately, but plenty of the watches ☺ as you can imagine their stock is quite comprehensive. 
Our visit was by no means over however. We had another fantastically varied and elaborate dinner that evening, at the “Bean and Beluga” restaurant, which like dinner the night before was astonishingly terrific, and which got us back to our hotel a tiny bit on the late side –no regrets though. Still, we had to rise early the next morning and catch a flight by chartered private jet to Salzburg. . . 
Volkswagen Phaetons waiting to collect us. By the way I gather the Volkswagen badge on a luxury sedan is incongruous to some people but it’s a vastly comfortable car to sit in, I can tell you that. 
Me getting off the plane. . . 
. . . and earning my paycheck .
Our accommodations for the evening: the Salzburg branch of the Sacher Hotel (there are two, one in Salzburg and one in Vienna; the first, in Vienna, opened its doors in 1876.) The two Sacher Hotels are the only source of the original Sachertorte. (Actually Sachertorte nomenclature has been the subject of decades-long legal wrangling between the Sacher hotels and the Demel bakery in Vienna, where the Sachertorte was first served to the public –the cake had been invented by Franz Sacher for a dinner party given by Prince Metternich in 1832. I won’t go into all the details but the upshot was that the hotels are allowed, thanks to an out of court settlement, to call their cakes “the Original Sachertorte” and the Demel bakery is allowed to decorate theirs with the words “Eduard Sacher Torte,” Eduard being the son of Franz Sacher. As you can probably tell the Viennese take their pastry seriously.) 
Lobby. 
A lot of prominent guests have stayed at the Sacher Hotel. Quite a few of them are renowned musicians, conductors and singers thanks to the Salzburg Music Festival, which has been running, on and off, since 1877. The present incarnation of the Festival dates to 1920 and was inaugurated by a performance of co-founder Hugo von Hoffmannsthal’s famous play Jedermann (Everyman) which is in turn based on the medieval morality play of the same name. Our group was welcomed by Lange CEO Jerzy Schaper at the hotel, and then Elizabeth Doerr and I went to lunch with our hosts from Lange & Söhne. Lunch was delicious, thanks to the excellent menu at Die Blaue Gans restaurant, except for an extremely bizarre dessert –asparagus ice cream. White asparagus (spargel) was in season and it’s eaten frequently and avidly during the Spargelzeit (asparagus season.) To give you an idea Germany produces around 82,000 tons a year which is only enough for about 60% of its actual consumption. Long story short, the Germans love their spargel, and the spargel ice cream was an honorable attempt but let us just say the experiment was not a success .
View looking along the Salzach River, behind the hotel. On the occasion of our visit, the Salzburg Whitsun Festival was in progress, which is an extension of the Salzburg Festival that takes place during Whitsun (Pentecost.) Lange & Söhne is one of the most important sponsors of the Festival, and that evening we were treated to a performance of an extremely rarely performed oratorio by Mozart –the Bethulia Liberata, or “Liberation of Bethulia,” which is based on the well known story of Judith and Holofernes from the apocryphal Book of Judith. For those not familiar with the story, it tells of the Jewish heroine Judith, whose city, Bethulia, is under siege by the Assyrian prince Holofernes. The siege seems unbreakable, and the inhabitants, it seems, must choose between two equally unpalatable fates: either dying of hunger and thirst, or surrendering to Holofernes, who is not, to put it mildly, renowned for magnanimity in victory. Judith takes matters into her own hands, dresses herself in her finest gown, enters the Assyrian camp, and, going into the tent of Holofernes, finds him very much in wine. He succumbs to her charms and allows her to stay as his guest, but eventually falls asleep, and she seizes the opportunity to whap off his head. The image of a beautiful princess beheading an ogre of an enemy general is pretty picturesque and has been the subject of quite a few rather lurid paintings including this one by Caravaggio: 
Most artists are happy just showing Judith and the head but Caravaggio had, shall we say, a taste for the jugular, hahahahaha .
Mozart wrote the oratorio when he was only 14, and it was not performed in his lifetime. The libretto is by Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his nom de plume of Metastasio, who was one of the most famous librettists of his day. The performance itself was held in the Salzburger Festspielhaus (opera house) and the pre-performance reception was held on the stage of the remarkable Felsenreitschule, which is carved out of the rock cliffs of the Mönchsberg (one of the five mountains of Salzburg.) The Felsenreitschule as the name implies began as a riding school in 1693 and the Festival began using it for staging plays and operas in the 1920s (the Trapp Family also performed at the Felsenreitshule, as you Sound of Music fans may remember.) 
A night at the opera: left to right, me, Elizabeth Doerr, Walter Lange, and Arnd Einhorn. My first meeting with Walter Lange, the living legend himself. 
Pre-performance reception at the Felsenreitschule. It’s quite a fantastic place and I imagine it must be a very interesting place to stage a production. The rock is a tough conglomerate of some sort (I’m no geologist) which retains a good deal of moisture and it acts as a sort of natural air conditioner; you can feel the cool coming off it. 
Our hosts: Mr. Jerzy Schaper, CEO, A. Lange & Söhne. . . 
. . . and Helga Rabl-Stadler, the President of the Board of the Salzburg Festival, wearing a Lange Cabaret. 
The cast of the Bethulia Liberata. Center in red is mezzo soprano Alisa Kolosova, as Judith; to the right, next to her, tenor Michael Spyres as Ozia, Prince of Bethulia. The performance was extremely interesting; one of the most curious aspects of the libretto is that exactly where you would think the action would shift to depicting the death of Holofernes, it instead shows a theological debate between Prince Ozia of Bethulia and his guest, the Ammonite Prince Achior, who had been an ally of Holofernes but whom Holofernes had sentenced to die after Achior had had the temerity to suggest that the Assyrians might not have the victory as long as the faith of the Bethulians in their God remained unshaken. Achior maintains that his gods are as logically defensible as the God of the Jewish people, while Ozia argues that rationally, Achior must recognize the inferiority of polytheistic beliefs and renounce them in favor of belief in one God. The argument Ozia presents is almost pure neo-Platonism; Ozia argues for the existence of one true God rather than the multiple gods the Ammonite worships, stating that the nature of God must logically be single, unrestricted by the specifics of a particular instantiation, and omnipresent. The result is that the oratorio has a certain detached, stately dignity and intellectual appeal –the story of Judith is well represented but the climax is offstage, and the story of Prince Achior’s spiritual transformation is almost more dramatically represented than the actions of Judith. 
The cast with Maestro Riccardo Muti, conductor, who in addition to organizing and directing much of the musical program of the Whitsun Festival, is also Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as Director of the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. 
Post-performance dinner and reception: left to right, Leonhard Rost, Walter Lange, Riccardo Muti, Jerzy Schaper, Jürgen Flimm (artistic director of the Salzburg Festival) 
Meeting some of the cast: far left, Maria Grazia Schiavo (who was pregnant –I think we were told that this would be her last performance until after her pregnancy was over), Nahual de Pierro, Arianna Vendittelli, and Barbara Bargnesi. 
Alisa Kolosova and Riccardo Muti. 
The next morning after breakfast, we had several hours before our flight and when I wandered out in front of the hotel after breakfast there was a parade going by –I think it was sponsored by a local brewery. 
I’m not sure exactly what the significance of this ritual was but there were quite a few guys on horseback wielding enormous bullwhips which they were cracking very, very loudly –it sounded like a fusillade of pistol shots. Very picturesque. . . 
That many horses makes for a messy street, and naturally you can’t leave a messy street .
Dominating Salzburg is a gigantic fortress: the Festung Hohensalzburg (“high Salzburg fortress”) which is one of the biggest castles in Europe; construction began in 1077 though much of the current castle dates to the 15th century. 
During our walk, we ran into the parade again. . . 
Outside the Salzburg Cathedral. . . 
The exterior of the Felsenreitschule. . . We saw a tremendous number of other fascinating sights, including the house in which Mozart was born, but both parts 1 and 2 of this report show only a fraction of all the pictures I took and you have to stop somewhere . It was a tremendous experience however. Seeing A. Lange & Söhne is a revelation, but even more so is seeing the manufactory in context. The degree to which Lange & Söhne is entwined with not only the history of Saxon watchmaking but also the larger cultural history of Germany is something that’s hard to appreciate unless you are actually there.
My sincerest thanks to Jerzy Schaper, CEO of A. Lange & Söhne; to Christian Englebrecht and Arnd Einhorn, to Elizabeth Doerr, and to all the wonderful folks at A. Lange & Söhne who made this visit possible. 
Until next time! Jack Forster (All images copyright Horomundi.com except those provided by A. Lange & Söhne.) Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2010 09:20AM by Jack Forster.
We remain in your debt.
 Great read!
Did you not mention you did all this in 4 days? Wow! It must have been overwhelming to say the least!
You incurable tourist you...lol, all in the pleasure of watchmaking, God I can't thank my profession enough sometimes.
Cheers from Victoria B.C. Prem C. Specialist watchmaker- SAV Communications expert
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