100th Auction
2019/11/15
Lot 41
A. Lange & Söhne, Glashütte B/Dresden, Movement No. 216, Case No. 127, 130 x 145 x 130 mm, circa 1913
A rare, small Glashuette torpedo boat chronometer with 54h power reserve indicator sold on 11/30/1914 to the hydrografic department of the k. u. k. Kriegsmarine in Pola for the sum of 560 Marks - with Lange extract from the archives
Case: mahogany. Dial: silvered. Movm.: brass movement, 56 mm, frosted, gilt, going barrel, spring detent escapement according to Thomas Earnshaw, Nickel-steel Guillaume balance 2 screws and 4 weights.
The chronometer no. 127 was sold to the Hamburg-American Line on August 13, 1913 for 800 mark. It is yet unclear why its mahogany case today holds the numbered movement and case of chronometer 216, sold to a completely different part of the world – to Pula, which is today part of the Republic of Croatia. At the time Pula was an important naval and commercial harbour of the Austro-Hungarian Navy with dry and floating docs, laboratories and depots as well as the Hydrographic Office, which created surveys based on their collected hydrographic data. An almost illegible French customs document that comes with the timepiece does not provide any further information on this mystery either.
This small size chronometer is part of a series of torpedo boat chronometers Lange & Söhne produced from 1911 on at the behest of the Imperial Naval Office in Berlin; no more than 65 of them had been produced by 1933. In R. Meis: A. Lange & Söhne, 1997, Reinhard Meis quotes a brochure dating from the 1920, which states: "The small size marine chronometer has the same advantages as our large size marine chronometers but is fitted with a simple barrel without fusee." Lange & Söhne only produced torpedo boat chronometers again near the end of World War II; those, however, were based on the category B pocket watch calibre 48.
A rare, small Glashuette torpedo boat chronometer with 54h power reserve indicator sold on 11/30/1914 to the hydrografic department of the k. u. k. Kriegsmarine in Pola for the sum of 560 Marks - with Lange extract from the archives
Case: mahogany. Dial: silvered. Movm.: brass movement, 56 mm, frosted, gilt, going barrel, spring detent escapement according to Thomas Earnshaw, Nickel-steel Guillaume balance 2 screws and 4 weights.
The chronometer no. 127 was sold to the Hamburg-American Line on August 13, 1913 for 800 mark. It is yet unclear why its mahogany case today holds the numbered movement and case of chronometer 216, sold to a completely different part of the world – to Pula, which is today part of the Republic of Croatia. At the time Pula was an important naval and commercial harbour of the Austro-Hungarian Navy with dry and floating docs, laboratories and depots as well as the Hydrographic Office, which created surveys based on their collected hydrographic data. An almost illegible French customs document that comes with the timepiece does not provide any further information on this mystery either.
This small size chronometer is part of a series of torpedo boat chronometers Lange & Söhne produced from 1911 on at the behest of the Imperial Naval Office in Berlin; no more than 65 of them had been produced by 1933. In R. Meis: A. Lange & Söhne, 1997, Reinhard Meis quotes a brochure dating from the 1920, which states: "The small size marine chronometer has the same advantages as our large size marine chronometers but is fitted with a simple barrel without fusee." Lange & Söhne only produced torpedo boat chronometers again near the end of World War II; those, however, were based on the category B pocket watch calibre 48.
Sold
estimated
10.000—15.000 €
Price realized
18.400 €