R u h l a
heart of the Thuringian watch-and-clock industry  - 140 years of tradition

Situated to the south of Eisenach in the Thuringian Forest, Ruhla is a traditional centre of the watch-and-clock industry and precision engineering.

In 1862, the brothers Christian and Georg Thiel founded
a metal ware factory and finally started producing
pocket watches in 1892. Continuously expanding, the company
created an image for itself being one of the biggest and most
prominent clock manufacturers in Germany..

The first important invention was the pocket watch “Fearless” which became most successful on the Northern American market. Almost annually the Thiel company presented new developments, initially having a pin escapement mechanism
and a jack elevator only.

From 1906 onwards the company launched into the production of men’s pocket watches (photograph). From the beginning on, a rational manufacturing was considered important in order to achieve a large-scale production based on high-quality standards.

Not earlier than in 1919 the “Thiela” was produced, a pocket watch having 15 stones, a piston cog escapement mechanism (i.e. Swiss anchor escapement) and a clutch elevator (photograph).

Bearing in mind the idea of decreasing crisis-proneness, the company decided to produce tools for the watch-and-clock industry as well as machine tools for the tool manufacturing industry on its own. The increasing number of customers in the metalworking industry eventually gave way to an own, independent engineering works.
However, clock manufacturing remained the most important field of work in the Thiels´ company, being able to offer a wide range of products.
As a highlight in the development of pocket watches a model having a digit display
based on an 18´´´clockwork was presented in 1922 (photograph).

The first 10´´´ wrist-watches for women were sold in 1935, being part of the collections Venus and Darling respectively (photograph).

Due to the Thiels’ expropriation proceedings in 1945 and the foundation of a so-called nationally-owned company on May 1^st, 1952, far-reaching changes took place after World War II.

Remaining material of the armaments industry, basically taken from time fuses,  provided the core for developing alarm clocks (photograph).
Additionally, inexpensive wrist-watches, traveller’s alarm clocks and multi-jewel men’s, women’s and pocket watches went into production.

In 1963, the robust mechanical pin anchor clockwork Kal. 24 was developed, resulting in the highly-automated production of 120 million pieces – 25.000 pieces a day in peak hours.

This clockwork was finally employed in wrist-watches (photograph), pocket watches, traveller’s alarm clocks, stopwatches, auto-detention clocks for cars and small desk clocks.

Inventing the contact-controlled electric wrist-watch in the same year, and immediately applying for a patent on it, the Thuringian watch-and-clock industry confirmed its technical competence (photograph).
Thus, also in Ruhla the way was paved for the age of quartz clocks.

The first analogue quartz wrist-watches came out in 1977 (photograph), proudly presenting the innovative LCD-wrist-watches only two years later (photograph). In the following 12 years three further generations of analogous quartz wrist-watch clockworks were developed,  concluding with the final one of 2,20 mm of clockwork height in 1990 (three photographs).

Apart from mechanical and short-time alarm clocks, the quartz alarm clock became one of the staple commodities in Ruhla, the rate of production reached 8.000 peaces a day (photograph).

The establishment of the manufacturing of  microelectronic components in 1979, combined with developing software used for circuits of watches, was considered as a further important phase of the former GDR´s watch-and-clock industry. From then on, the circuits for watch production were created in the own company – even up to the basis of radio clocks.

The last innovation worth mentioning was a radio-controlled table-clock,
numerously patented (photograph).


Once more, a new phase of the watch-and-clock industry in Ruhla was triggered out by historical developments, this time due to the extensive political changes in which led to the re-union of Germany in 1990.

The large enterprise “Uhrenwerke Ruhla” split up in several private, highly specialized small and medium -sized businesses, among them our company “Gardé Uhren und Feinmechanik Ruhla GmbH” (“Gardé Watches and Precision Engineering Ruhla Ltd.”).

Set up as an MBO-enterprise on October 1^st, 1991, Gardé was confronted with the loss of all transport routes of the former “Uhrenwerke”.
A completely new range of watches and precision engineering products was put forward. From 1993 onwards, a new generation of radio-controlled wrist-watches was worked on intensively.
Finally, the watch could be presented on the occasion of the fair in Basel in 1995.
In the meantime, several hundred thousand radio-controlled wrist-watches and modules had been delivered on the markets of Germany, the USA, Japan, France, Italy, Switzerland etc.
Being present at the permanent exhibition of timekeeping technologies in the “Deutsches Museum” in Munich is another indicator of the success and public esteem of Gardé´s radio-controlled wrist-watch engineering.

As a result of success and reorientation we offer our customers a wide-ranging programme including lots of special assortments.

 101897