Glashütte Original watches

Glashütte Original was formed in 1994 through the privatisation of VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB), the state-owned watch company of East Germany. Heinz W. Pfeifer bought the business, then with 72 employees, and relaunched production under the Glashütte Original name. The Swatch Group acquired the company in 2000.

The brand draws on the watchmaking history of the town of Glashütte in Saxony, which began in 1845 when Ferdinand Adolph Lange and other watchmakers settled there. GUB had been formed in 1951 from several firms and kept making mechanical movements through the quartz era. Glashütte Original makes its own movements, with up to 95% of movement components produced in-house, and its collections include Senator, Pano, Sixties, SeaQ and Spezialist.