Just seven years after its re-founding in 1990 and just four years after the introduction of its fantastic first watch, the legendary Lange 1, A. Lange & Söhne introduced its first watch with a brand-new in-house automatic movement.

Founded in 1845, A. Lange & Söhne was famous for producing excellent pocket watches and wristwatches in Glashütte, Germany’s center of high-end watchmaking. On May 8, 1945, the very last day of World War II, the Lange factory and headquarters were almost completely destroyed in an air raid. After the war, Lange was expropriated and the famous name nearly disappeared were it not for Walter Lange, great-grandson of the company’s founder, restoring the manufacture in 1990.

Four years after its founding, Lange introduced its first collection of four exquisite hand wound watches. Just three years later, the company put out its first automatic movement, the Sax-0-Mat, and cased it as the now famous Langematik watch.

This ref. 301.027 Langematik from 1999 represents everything Lange is known for. The 36.8 mm 18K white gold case features elegant thin lugs and a bold polished convex bezel. The black dial sports elongated baton indices that mesh well with the long lumed alpha hands. Meanwhile, the oversized decentral seconds register at the 6 o’clock position and the large applied Arabic ‘12’ numeral provide the dial with a wonderful balanced injection of character.

Once turned over, the true splendor of the Langematik reveals itself. Visible through the sapphire caseback, the cal. L.921 is a true work of art. A deeply engraved 21K yellow gold three-quarter micro-rotor with an additional platinum mass on the periphery sits atop a beautifully finished movement with German silver bridges. The movement features a unique zero-reset functionality, as alluded to by the ‘0’ in the Sax-0-Mat name, that allows the seconds hand to be reset to zero when the crown is pulled out for precise setting of the time.

This exquisite and historically important watch was produced for just seven years and much appreciated by collectors. It comes as a full set with the original boxes and open papers.