As always, a visit to Glashütte Original turns into a journey of discovery of history, culture and art, as well as savoir-faire and fine watchmaking. While it is true that each L'Orologio Club partner manufactory has its own peculiarities and excellences, among the most interesting on the world stage, Glashütte Original is however the only manufacturer with a historical-geographical affiliation that separates it completely from the Swiss context. At least 800 kilometres of separation: such is the distance to the Swiss border. We are in fact in the east of Germany, in an area bordering the Czech Republic and a forty-minute drive from Dresden, the capital of Saxony under Augustus the Strong, renamed 'Florence on the Elbe' by the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, a contemporary of Goethe. Our visit kicks off from Desda, with a tour of the city that aims to contextualise the production of the manufacture that today belongs to the Swatch Group, which maintains its production independence from its Swiss subsidiaries. This special region of Germany is characterised by an ancient history of great splendour and by vicissitudes, starting from the end of the Second World War, that erased it from the memory of a generation, only to return to its former glory in recent times. Naturally, after the reunification of the two Germanies. Dresden, which was literally razed to the ground by the power of five thousand tons of bombs dropped by the Anglo-Americans in February 1945, killing more than twenty-five thousand people, is still in a constant renaissance. The city boasts the country's most important engineering school and it was here, more precisely in the nearby Ore Mountains, that Saxon watchmaking originated and developed. It too is characterised by a history of splendour, decline and rebirth, which is masterfully narrated in the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Nicolas G. Hayek in the town of Glashütte. Just a few steps from the museum is the actual manufacture, where the production of Glashütte Original watches has been taking place since the 1960s. A manufacture that produces in-house more than 95% of its watch components, from the gears to the dials, made in the recently acquired factory in Pforzheim, a former supplier to the company. Glashütte Original's original approach to haute horlogerie is to create innovative, useful complications that are attentive to the needs of the user, not just to merit for its own sake. Representative of this philosophy are the Senator Diary models, with a mechanical acoustic reminder to set the time and date of an important engagement over a 30-day period, the PanoMaticCounter, with a manual digital tachometer, and the Senator Cosmopolite, world time that allows you to simultaneously know the time at home and the local time where you are by choosing from 35 world time zones (including those that differ by half an hour or quarter of an hour), taking into account daylight saving time in countries that adopt it. Alongside this is the quest for maximum precision, which has given rise to the Senator Excellence collection, equipped with the innovative Calibre 36. Designed with a reduced number of components in the name of maximum reliability, it offers an impressive 100 hours of power reserve with a single barrel. The designers have also worked on eliminating friction, so that the energy load is always available at maximum torque, for perfect running stability. A new profile was therefore used for the teeth of the barrel and centre wheel, gears between which there is more torque transmission within the time train. Optimised time and procedures for assembly and maintenance of the calibre, rationalising certain elements. Such as the new anchor bridge, which integrates the anchor's limiting pins into its very geometry, eliminating an element of fragility of traditional mechanical movements. Calibre 36, which is now a major highlight of Glashütte Original production, uses a silicon balance spring and inertial balance (28,800 vibrations per hour) and is mounted in the watch case middle using a bayonet system for greater stability. The production of the calibres, all strictly manufactured, was the focus of the visit with L'Orologio Club. From the production of the components to the finishing stages, which were the subject of a welcome hands-on test for our guests. Finished with fine handcrafted decorations, such as engraving and mirror polishing, and finishes such as perlage and Glashütte wave (the Saxon version of the famous côtes de Genève, a pattern of parallel milling that differs in the size of the milled strips), even the simplest of movements takes several hours to assemble. Therefore, production is rationally divided into different workshops, depending on the level of complication of the calibre. When series production is designed to provide a reliable and easy-to-maintain product with an excellent price/quality ratio, it is combined with top-of-the-range models characterised by a very high level of craftsmanship, for which the most specialised workforce cannot be rescinded, which can still be found in the places where watchmaking was born. In Germany, this place is the town of Glashütte. In addition to the town's old production, the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum in Glashütte exhibits the manufacture's production during the GDR.
