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David Weber

Passing on the fireYoung Watchmakers follow in the footsteps of Ferdinand A. Lange

David Weber is happy. He has cleaned and regulated the customer’s watch, fitted and aligned the spring, and checked all the adjustments. He has assembled the movement and rechecked its accuracy over the course of a test run of several days. Now he is putting the watch back into its case. If it had been necessary, he would also have filed the bevelled edges and renewed the polish. He is trained to do so. In 2008 he passed his final examinations at the Lange Watchmaking School with flying colours.

The Lange Watchmaking School has been in existence since 1997, and has so far produced 66 graduates. Once a year Lange invites the most promising training applicants to an assessment centre in the manufacture. They then have to prove their manual skills, by filing, cutting out a movement piece according to a drawing, and assembling a watch without instructions. The main thing is to identify how much manual skills, patience and technical understanding an applicant has.

For Jan Helbig it was the perfect training. After several training phases in the manufactory, he went on to assemble chronograph movements for the DOUBLE SPLIT and later the LANGE 31. For him this is an exciting complication because it is the first watch to guarantee a reliable power reserve for 31 days. For a few days now, the individual parts of a TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite” have been lying on his workbench. The 24-year-old Helbig is proud of the fact that he is now permitted to assemble the most complicated Lange watch.

The learning process has been going on right from the first beginnings

When the young Ferdinand A. Lange founded his watch manufactory in Glashütte on 7 December 1845, he initially trained 15 young men. He taught them all basic skills, made use of their talents and urged them to specialise. He decided to “pass on the fire” and to set forth on new paths. As did his great-grandson Walter Lange who, 145 years to the day after the first manufactory was set up, continued the inheritance of his forefathers. This was to mark a new beginning. At that time, David Weber and Jan Helbig were five years old. Now they are part of the Lange tradition. And they are fanning the flames of that tradition.