The Saxon Standard — A. Lange & Söhne

Some houses have a heritage. Only one has a resurrection.

A. Lange & Söhne was founded in 1845 in Glashütte, a failing Saxon mining town, by a man whose true invention was not a watch but an entire industry. For a century it made some of the finest timepieces in the world. Then its factory was destroyed on the last day of the Second World War, its name was expropriated by the East German state, and for four decades A. Lange & Söhne simply ceased to exist — until, in his mid-sixties, Walter Lange willed it back into being on the anniversary of the day it began.

This monograph is the long version of a conversation we would have with you across the counter: why people who can own anything so often end up wearing a Lange. It walks the house from its origins through its erasure and improbable revival, and explains the ideas that make its watches unlike anyone else’s — the three-quarter plate, twofold assembly, the hand-engraved balance cock, the untreated German-silver movements built to age honestly, the outsize date drawn from a Dresden opera clock, and the Datograph that Philippe Dufour called the finest chronograph movement ever made.

It is a house that chose to be understood rather than seen. This book is for the understanding.

For those who understand.