Engraver Simone Rauchfuß is taking a new start at angle grinding her burin and puts the polish paper aside. Then she begins to engrave the motif into the metal. Petals and floral patterns. Her restfulness and concentration are impressive. Her personal handwriting – the depth of the cut and the curl of her lines – will make the balance cock distinctive and unparalleled. The Lange watch invariably becomes a unique item.

The work of Product Designer Romy Küchenmeister-Jensch begins much earlier. She also refers to peace and quiet as being an advantage of Glashütte. Peace and quiet for her creative work. Romy Küchenmeister-Jensch puts a face to the Lange watch “always with the aspiration to make the values and characteristics of Lange visible in every model, so that the brand can be distinguished and is perceived as belonging to a family“. What does it look like – the Lange-gene? “Understatement, precision, clarity, timeless beauty“ – the 33-year old woman from Dresden replies.

Women make up for more than half of the workforce of A. Lange & Söhne – 58 percent to be precise. It doesn’t surprise that most of them are working creatively, with a calling to bring the uniqueness of the Lange timepieces to perfection. “I believe that women are more sensitive, with a finer touch, when it comes to engraving“, says Simone Rauchfuß. “They often work an engraving more delicately and in a more filigree way than men. And at times we are more persevering“, she claims convincingly, “always trying to go further – by adding a little ornament here and there or putting in an additional line, in order to make the picture look even more perfect."

The quiet can already be felt going along the Müglitz valley, but it doesn’t exist in the daily work of Product Manager Heike Ahrendt: “Above all I have to communicate, from my desk, in meetings and in the tea kitchen. For I have to make sure that our watches
are not just running on time, but are also being shipped on time, have to be in control of deadlines, push and pester others."

Or take watchmaker Kerstin Richter as an example. She doesn’t really seem to be a person who is easily pushed though. The screwdriver that she holds is hardly discernible. She is looking through her magnifying glass and appears to be all herself. There it comes again – the peace and quiet. It wouldn’t be possible to manage those tiny components without it. Everybody here is really fascinated by those tiny parts: their interaction, their beauty and their perfection. “It has been the goal of Walter Lange to manufacture exquisite and delicate movements after the comeback of Lange in 1990“, Kerstin Richter remembers. At the former VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (state-owned watchmaking company) “we had mass production, therefore we had to start over and be retrained in our craftsmanship“, she explains. Whoever is watching her, can tell that she has learnt hers.

This combination of technical and visual perfection is something that Heike Ahrendt has been organising for 17 years, but it’s never been boring, she says. “Quite the opposite, sometimes I almost wish for a bit of boredom, because there is so much happening, because our clocks are ticking really fast in the day-to-day business. No day, week or month is like the one before. Never has this year’s fair been like last year’s. I think that my work is very varied.“

Beate Weber doesn’t see her situation any different. Chamfering, grinding, polishing – she needs a sure yet fine touch and a trained eye. At Lange every component of a movement – and there are in total several thousand different components – is brought to perfection and given a final touch, which is component-specific – irrespective of whether it is visible through the sapphire crystal glass or not. The finisseurs of Lange add manual perfection and make every timepiece unique. “I doubt that all the different movement parts of Lange will ever have been on my work desk”, the trained porcelain painter states. “Many parts are fiddly and especially new parts are always a big challenge for me.” She pushes a whiplash spring into the pith of an elderberry shoot and takes it in loops onto films coated with progressively finer diamond powder. No unevenness can be felt as the surfaces are given a mirror polish.

Many of the women at Lange are from the area and if you ask them, their connection to watchmaking often runs in the family. Maybe that’s why this tradition is very important to them. “In my job I like being inspired by the old watches of Ferdinand Adolph Lange“, says Romy Küchenmeister-Jensch. “The image, the brand, the design, the technology – everything at Lange has been influenced by tradition”, stresses Simone Rauchfuß. And Beate Weber has the impression that an increasing number of people are fed up with living in a fast-lane society that thrives on throwing away. “Who in these days is still manufacturing products that claim to be made for eternity? That is what keeps me going“, she says. “Knowing that I put my work into something which is forever, just like our watches“.

Is it true that all the staff at Lange have a special gene? Views on this differ widely. What is it that connects them? The answer is: Being proud of their brand and their desire for a perfect watch.

As already mentioned, it is generally agreed that women are more intuitive and more sensitive. “With all the talk about the existence of multi-tasking, I really have a few female colleagues, who can do multiple things at once”, Kerstin Richter says. “The accomplishments of women may not be so obvious, not readily discernable“, Heike Ahrendt believes, “they tend to keep a lower profile and are more modest“.

The watch industry will convene again in Geneva in January 2010 – as every year. An industry, which is still dominated by men. They will immerse in a world of highly complex timepieces and will then discuss technical masterpieces in respective collector’s forums. Will they realise that those world-famous and innovative mechanical wristwatches of A. Lange & Söhne, which are symbols of male status, carry the fine senses of female creation?