A. Lange & Söhne

Lange Uhren GmbH

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Watchmaking
Genre	Watchmaker
Founded	1845 relaunched 1990
Founder	Ferdinand Adolph Lange
Headquarters	Glashütte, Germany
Key people	Wilhelm Schmid (CEO)
Products	Pocket and wrist watches
Number of employees	500
Parent	Richemont
Website	www.alange-soehne.com

A. Lange & Söhne makes high quality and prestige watches.

The name is a trademark of German watchmaking company Lange Uhren GmbH ("Lange"), a subsidiary of Richemont SA.

Lange was founded in 1845 by Ferdinand Adolph Lange in the town of Glashütte, near Dresden, in the state of Saxony. Under Ferdinand, and then, following his death, his sons Emil and Richard, Lange produced quality pocket watches, the company's very best products generally being given the "1A" designation. Under subsequent generations of the Lange family, the company continued to produce pocket watches and, like many German watch makers, produced oversized wrist watches for use by German airmen in World War II.

In 1948, the post-war Soviet administration expropriated the company's property, and the Lange brand ceased to exist. However, in December 1990, following the collapse of the East German government, the founder's great-grandson, Walter Lange, together with watch industry executive Günter Blümlein, restored the company with the assistance of several Swiss watch manufacturers, including IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre. The refounded Lange, again operating from Glashütte, presented its first range of wrist watches in 1994. Today, A. Lange & Söhne (litt. A. Lange & Sons) wrist watches are sold globally and Lange, like IWC, is a member of the Richemont group.

All Lange watches contain mechanical rather than quartz movements and, with the exception of a very few special edition watches, Lange watch cases are made of yellow gold, rose gold, white gold, or platinum. Lange movements are developed, produced, and assembled by Lange itself. Lange's movement design and decoration is distinctively Glashütte in appearance, eschewing typically Swiss features, such as multiple bridges and cocks, or pearlage, in favor of three-quarter plates, "Glashütte stripes", hand-engraved balance cocks and screwed gold chatons. Lange movements are made from a metal known as German silver, as opposed to the plated brass typically used for Swiss movements. Lange watches tend to have a distinctive appearance. For example, the "Lange 1" model features an asymmetric layout with no overlap among its key indicators: a dial displaying the hours and minutes, a smaller subsidiary dial displaying seconds, an oversized double window date display, and a power reserve indicator. Lange's watches are often described as more "austere" or "Teutonic" in appearance than watches produced by comparable Swiss firms.