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.

有些世家擁有的是傳承;只有一間,擁有的是復生。

朗格於一八四五年誕生於薩克森一座沒落的礦鎮格拉蘇蒂,創辦人真正的發明並非一枚錶,而是一整個產業。此後一個世紀,它造出了世上最出色的一批時計。然後,在二戰的最後一天,廠房被炸毀;名字被東德政權收歸國有;接下來的四十年,朗格這個名字,就這樣從錶盤上徹底消失——直到年逾六旬的華特・朗格(Walter Lange),在當年創業的同一個日子,憑一己意志把它重新喚回。

這本專書,是我們願意隔著櫃檯與你細談的那場對話的完整版本:為什麼有能力擁有一切的人,最後往往選擇戴上一枚朗格。書中走過這間世家的起源、抹除與那場近乎不可能的重生,並且逐一拆解那些令它的錶與眾不同的理念——四分之三夾板、雙重組裝、手工雕刻的擺輪夾板、刻意不做電鍍、任其誠實地隨歲月轉色的德國銀機芯、源自德累斯頓歌劇院時鐘的大日曆,以及那枚被獨立製錶大師杜佛(Philippe Dufour)譽為史上最出色計時機芯的 Datograph。

這是一間選擇被讀懂、而非被看見的世家。這本書,獻給讀懂的人。

予識者。

藏書

薩克森標準 — 朗格

八角與鐵砧 — 愛彼

時之形 — 卡地亞

世代相傳 — 百達翡麗