Nice but Swiss Made.

 

Watch is from 1995. Though the movement is Swiss, the rest of the watch was made in Germany.

 

I know that and the history of Chronoswiss.

Excurs: History

Compared to other competitors Chronoswiss undoubtedly was a young brand of about 35 years. Chronoswiss was family owned and a family runned business and without its enthusiastic founder a dream would not have become true.

Gerd-Rüdiger Lang started his career as an apprentice in a small retail watch store in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and at the age of 19 he worked at a watchmaker's shop on the Fehmarn island in the Baltic Sea.

He then used to work for Hamilton for some time. Not commonly known ist that at that time Hamilton produced watches for ZentRa.
Right after he left Hamilton he was hired by Heuer where his career as a watchmaker got the final push. At those times Heuer was a "large" company with about 160 employees and Charles Heuer, Jack Heuer's father, was the man at the top. In the course of the years Gerd-Rüdiger Lang worked in almost all Heuer departments (production, stopwatches, chronograph assembly).

As a side note and for the Stowa fans amongst us: Heuer at that time was represented in Germany by Walter Storz`s company in Pforzheim.
In 1968 Heuer's new branch office was established together with IWC in Frankfurt and out of a sudden Gerd-Rüdiger Lang became an IWC-employee but remained only in charge of Heuer products.

Gerd-Rüdiger Lang stayed in Frankfurt until 1974, the year he moved to Munich where the Heuer Time GmbH was established at exactly that time. Gerd-Rüdiger Lang took over as head of the technical department including CS.

In 1980 Jack Heuer came up to Gerd-Rüdiger Lang and told him "We have to close down Germany, you are fired." Another victim of the quartz crisis though. Uhren Huber in Munich (which still in business) took over the responsibilities from the Heuer Time GmbH but not the service of Heuer watches.

Gerd-Rüdiger Lang got a phone call: "Huber is probably going to take over our representation here, but they won't do the service. Don't you want to take over the service for Heuer in Germany ?".

Gerd-Rüdiger Lang decided to go this way. At the beginning he only worked for Heuer, later he did business with Alfred Rochat and Kelek as well. I didn't take long and the first Chronoswiss watches were launched. Chronoswiss was then legally registered in 1984.
Gerd-Rüdiger Lang extended his collection step by step. His contacts within the swiss watch making industry helped him a lot. One of the very first models was the Kelek repeater designed by Gerd-Rüdiger Lang, but produced by Kelek. Some limited editions with Valjoux 23 and Valjoux 72 calibers followed and soon after that the first Chronoswiss Regulator was launched (1987). The "Chronoswiss Regulateur" featured an old Unitas hw movement (production already stopped in 1984). This watch cleary marked the breakthrough of Chronoswiss. (Copied from my Chronoswiss Pacific Chronograph review).

However this maybe if a dial says Swiss Made there is a 100% possibility it is.

 

Mike,

I became aware of this brand in the 1990's. At that time, they were the darling of the watch enthusiast crowd because of the watches they made using things like exhibition backs, regulateur dials, etc. Matter of fact, Chronoswiss is generally regarded as being the first watch company to regularly use transparent case backs on a regular basis. In a few years, everybody had them.

Chronoswiss had an atelier in Munich where Gerd Lang employed a staff where, aside from the unimproved movements, the rest of the watch was made, though I'm sure other parts may have been imported, just like most other manufactures. The movements were largely modified Enicar and Valjoux movements. Production was always limited, usually between 5,000-7,000 watches per year.

It should be noted various German companies (Sinn, Stowa, Meistersinger, Tutima and others) used or still use Swiss movements. Before Lang sold the company to the Ebsteins, he opened an atelier in Bavaria in 2007 and employed a staff of 33, many of them watchmakers. When the company was sold, the atelier in Bavaria was closed, and everything moved to Switzerland.

In the '90's Chronoswiss and A. Lange and Sohne were regarded by watch enthusiasts as the best watches to come from that country, even though Lange had only been re-started a few years before. Glasshutte Original was an emerging brand, and today Lange and GO have attained a much larger stature in the watch world than they had 20-25 years ago. Most younger folks have never heard of Chronoswiss. Many who have do not know the significant role they had in the rebuilding of the German watch industry.