A. Lange & Söhne

A. Lange & Söhne creates outstanding mechanical timepieces that feature challenging complications and follow a clear and classical design line. Innovative engineering skills and traditional craftsmanship at the highest level guarantee a state-of-the-art calibre design with meticulously hand-finished movements and utmost mechanical precision.

Dresden watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange laid the cornerstone of Saxony’s precision watchmaking industry when he established his manufactory in 1845. His precious pocket watches remain highly coveted among collectors all over the world. The company was expropriated after the Second World War, and the name A. Lange & Söhne nearly vanished. But in 1990, Walter Lange, Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s great-grandson, ventured to start over again. Today, Lange crafts only a few thousand wristwatches, mainly in gold or platinum, per year. They are endowed exclusively with proprietary movements that are lavishly decorated and twice assembled by hand. With more than 70 manufacture calibres developed since 1990, A. Lange & Söhne has secured a top-tier position among the world’s finest watch brands. Its greatest successes include brand icons such as the LANGE 1, the first regularly produced wristwatch with an outsize date, the ZEITWERK, with its precisely jumping numerals, and the DATOGRAPH, the 1999 flyback chronograph whose precisely jumping minute counter set a new benchmark for the genre. Extraordinary complications such as the ZEITWERK MINUTE REPEATER, the TRIPLE SPLIT and the so far most complicated model, the GRAND COMPLICATION, introduced in 2013 in a limited edition of six, represent what the manufactory always strives for: to drive the traditional art of watchmaking to ever-new heights. The sporty yet elegant ODYSSEUS, introduced in 2019, marked the start of a new chapter for A. Lange & Söhne. Browse every A. Lange & Söhne watch in the WorldTempus Watch Library, or follow the latest A. Lange & Söhne news, new releases and interviews from our editorial team below.

The History of A. Lange & Söhne: Ferdinand Adolph Lange

A. Lange & Söhne has among the more storied horological histories around, one that begins with the entrepreneurial and socially conscious Ferdinand Adolph Lange. Born in 1815 in Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, Ferdinand A. Lange would pioneer watchmaking in the region after first catching the horological bug as a 15-year-old apprentice. By 30 he set out to establish a watchmaking trade in the impoverished city of Glashütte, with records from the 1840s showing how he had secured a bank loan where he was then free to train apprentices and buy tools. In 1868 his son Richard became a partner, later joined by his brother Emil, and the company took the name A. Lange & Söhne. The founder’s birth year lives on today in the A. Lange & Söhne 1815 collection.

Walter Lange and the Rebirth of A. Lange & Söhne in 1990

The great-grandson of Ferdinand A. Lange, Walter Lange was the modern-day legend of the A. Lange & Söhne house. He was among the founding fathers behind establishing Glashütte as an illustrious watchmaking centre to rival that of Switzerland. After serving in the second world war, Walter Lange returned to Glashütte but found he was not free to continue his family’s legacy: in 1948 the family firm was expropriated in the Soviet Occupation Zone of eastern Germany. Only some 40 years later in 1990 was Walter Lange, along with his renowned manager Günter Blümlein, able to relaunch his family’s company. On 24 October 1994, the 70-year-old Lange presented the first four watches of the new collection, including the LANGE 1, to the public, which retailers and the press loved and couldn't help but buy up enthusiastically.

A. Lange & Söhne Watch Collections

The A. Lange & Söhne catalogue is built around a small number of families, each with a clear identity.

LANGE 1: Launched in 1994, the Lange 1 is the brand icon, recognisable by its off-centre dial layout and the patented Lange outsize date, inspired by the five-minute clock in Dresden’s Semper Opera House.

ZEITWERK: Introduced in 2009, the Zeitwerk shows hours and minutes as precisely jumping numerals rather than with hands, driven by a constant-force escapement. The Zeitwerk explained video covers the mechanism in detail.

1815: Named after Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s birth year, the A. Lange & Söhne 1815 collection draws on historic Lange pocket watches, with Arabic numerals, a railway-track minute scale and classic proportions.

DATOGRAPH: Released in 1999, the Lange Datograph combines a flyback chronograph, a precisely jumping minute counter and the outsize date, and remains one of the most admired chronographs in modern watchmaking.

ODYSSEUS: The house’s first sports watch, the Lange Odysseus arrived in 2019 with an integrated bracelet, day and date displays and 120 metres of water resistance.

SAXONIA and RICHARD LANGE: SAXONIA offers the purest expression of Lange design and the brand’s most accessible entry point, while RICHARD LANGE, named after the founder’s son, focuses on precision timekeeping.

A. Lange & Söhne Complications: From the Datograph to the Triple Split

Chic understatement with design free of any fuss may be the A. Lange & Söhne signature, but its complicated watches, from chronograph to perpetual calendar creations, are just as eye-catching - and among the most mechanically superior watches one can buy. Among earlier pieces, the 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar Handwerkskunst, no longer part of the current collection, combined hours, minutes and subsidiary seconds with a perpetual calendar, moon phase, leap-year indication and a rattrapante chronograph with minute counter. Or consider the Double Split, launched in 2004 as the first chronograph with a double-rattrapante function and featuring two pairs of stopwatch hands for time comparisons, lap time and reference-value measurements. Its successor, the TRIPLE SPLIT of 2018, added a third split-seconds function for the hours, so it can compare events lasting up to 12 hours. The house’s most complicated watch is the rose gold Grand Complication itself, packed with a grande sonnerie, perpetual calendar and split seconds chronograph with flying seconds. And for chronograph purists, there is the clear-cut 1815 Chronograph, with its jumping minute counter and flyback function, alongside the Lange Datograph, which pairs the same flyback mechanism with the outsize date. Among its most complicated pieces, the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold "Lumen" was priced at CHF 650,000, according to CEO Wilhelm Schmid in a September 2024 WorldTempus interview.