V.E. Day, May 8th, 1945. Germany has surrendered to the Allies. In the final chaotic hours of the War, Soviet fighter-bombers attack a retreating German column in Glashütte, destroying the factory of a local watchmaker, A. Lange & Söhne. Established by Ferdinand Adolph Lange in 1845, his eponymous business had lasted—spookily—exactly one-hundred years. Following Soviet occupation, the business was nationalized as Mechanik Lange & Söhne VEB in 1948 and later absorbed into Mechanik Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB) in 1951. But for the dream of one man, that might’ve been the end of the Lange story. Walter Lange, born in Dresden in 1924, always hoped to take over ownership of his family’s business. However, in 1942 he was conscripted into the German military and badly injured on the Russian front in 1945. Arriving back in Glashütte in April of that year, he was cruelly witness to the destruction of the Lange manufacture. He fled his prescribed fate at..
