Worn & Wound
Ruhla: The East German Watch Brand That Went to Space
For decades now, watch collectors have become enamored with the significance, popularity, and (perhaps most importantly) the absurd affordability of Soviet-era watches. There’s the ingenious Vostok Amphibia dive watch; the various Poljot and Strela chronographs vital to the Russian space program; and the minimalist, glossy-white Raketa Big Zero that signified “the end of history.” What’s lesser known are the timepieces from another part of the Iron Curtain-East Germany, which once encompassed two of the most significant areas of the historic watch industry. Today we associate German watches with the town of Glashütte, where Walter Lange set up a watchmaking school in 1841 and evolved it into one of the great horological houses. Meanwhile, about 300 kilometers to the west is the town of Ruhla. Like Glashütte, Ruhla was also known for metal mining and a tradition of blacksmithing and metalworking. After World War II, it also happened to fall into the Soviet occupation zone, even though it was as far west as one could get. Perhaps it was always fated for this. Image via Ostalgie-Ruhla: Watches of the GDR Both sides faced the evolution of pocket watches to wristwatches, on opposite sides of the World Wars. After 1945, the watch factories in Glashütte and Ruhla were reorganized into publicly-owned enterprises-having endured reparations back to Moscow (to jump-start the USSR’s own watch industry) and the general devastation of the war. Glashütte was a mor...
