Glashütte Original

Marcus Hanke
[PuristSPro Moderator]
11515

• Show profile
• Show other posts

Ten years ago: the end of Union Glashütte as a true manufacture brand

Some community members might recall the days when the watches of GO's subsidiary brand, Union Glashütte were discussed here. These watches were distributed only in Germany and Austria, and were true manufacture watches, albeit not from the start.

 In 1995, one year after the brand Glashütte Original was founded, Union was created as independent brandname, and was used to make money that could be invested into the production of high quality timepieces under the GO name. Back then, Union watches were equipped with quartz movements and ETA selfwinding movements (2824 and 7750).

In 1998, things changed when Union re-started with the financial contribution of its dealers, who then held shares of the company. Now, only manufacture movements were used. The Union movements were based on the GO movements 10-30 and 10-60, which later became the cal. 39 family. Dubbed Union cal. 26, it was lacking the sophisticated hand-applied decoration of the GO counterpart, but was still a very nicely made movement. It was made on the same machines and by the same staff as the GO movements.



Early models of the "Tradition" series with the cal. 26.



The later "Klassik" series adopted the panorama date, albeit in a central position. This was adopted by GO models only much later, after 2006, before that, GO had its date always placed at 4.









2002 came the Union perpetual, using the corresponding GO movement, with the variation of conventional hands instead of windows for weekday and month. Severyl years later, GO would use this design for its full calendar.





Aside that, there were modular chronographs, pointer calendars, regulators, GMT watches offered.





Especially the hand-winding watches of the Union "Bergter" collection, launched in 2002 and 2003, became an immediate success and made the brand well known even outside its region of distribution.





Our famous Ei8htohms once reviewed this Bergter watch with a favorable result:

www.thepurists.com

As the Dürrstein edition, even a flying tourbillon in a 18k cushion case was released in 2001, with the same movement that was also encased into the GO 1845 tourbillon.






Unfortunately, sometime in 2004, the decision must have been made to discontinue the Union brand as a manufacture. When Swatch took over the Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GUB from Heinz Pfeifer in 2000, they were interested only in the GO brand. In the first few reports of the Swatch Group, Union was not even listed as a Swatch Group brand.

Gradually, the interesting timepieces were discontinued, complications disappeared from the Union catalogues. The last new Union watch with manufacture movement was presented in 2005, a very simple time-only piece with small second:



This reference marks the end of Union Glashütte as a true manufacture brand. In the following, it was decided to equip Union watches with ETA movements. In order to meet the rigid criteria for the "made in Glashütte" designation, which were put up by GO (and Lange) itself, the cosmetic finishing was done in Glashütte, and *gasp* an own rotor was designed to be produced and assembled in Glashütte.



Sic transit gloria mundi.

Marcus

Site Info.