Then came the war and Tag Heuer Grand Carrera Chronograph Calibre 17 RS 2 LE CAV518B.FC6237 Mens Watch its aftermath. The industry was obliterated. Buildings destroyed, tooling packed off to the Soviet Union as war reparations, all Glashütte companies consolidated under Communist rule. Walter Lange fled to the West, his family business no more. While the watches of the Communist era are interesting in their own right, the museum area devoted to these pieces is decidedly more sober.My visit to the museum impressed upon me the importance of the German watch*** tradition and made me wonder whether, if not for the war and its shadows, Glashütte watches would have surpassed the Swiss industry in the public mindset as the gold standard. The importance of Lange on German Tag Heuer Grand Carrera Chronograph Calibre 17 RS 2 LE CAV518B.FC6237 Mens Watch and German watch*** on the world of haute horology are difficult to overstate.
After a morning being dazzled by modern miracles and six-figure watches at the A. Lange & Söhne factory, I needed some grounding in reality. The German Watch Museum Glashütte provided some perspective. Just down the block from the Lange manufacture, the museum is a pilgrimage to add to any watch lovers list.The story of Glashütte watch*** is a tale of great triumph and achievement and also one of devastation and sorrow. But like any good story, it has a happy ending. Walking through the museum, one starts from the beginning, when Ferdinand Adolph Lange and a few other German watchmakers set up the first workshops in this small isolated village.The museum tells the story through elegant displays and some extraordinary historical timepieces. Here are some of the first pocketwatches Lange made as a young man in the 1840s. We see the development of innovations and movement decoration from Lange himself and less known names like Assmann, Goertz and Stübner (anyone?). Here are marine chronometers from the late 1800s, Flieger Tag Heuer Grand Carrera Chronograph Calibre 17 RS 2 LE CAV518B.FC6237 Mens Watch from World War II, the most complicated clock standing in the main entry hall (Perpetual calendar! Equation of time! Astrolabe!).
