The A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Lumen Honeygold
A lovely luminous take on digital timekeeping.
The Lange Zeitwerk is one of a still-small group of watches that show the time digitally, rather than with the conventional hour and minute hands. Jump hour watches are something of a niche category already, but showing the hours and minutes with numbers on jumping disks, is considerably more difficult thanks to the amount of energy necessary to turn the disks, and at the top of the hour, when all three disks have to jump at the same time, the extra load can be considerable. If power is not managed properly, this can affect precision, and of course, a digital hour and minute wristwatch that is not actually very precise would be a noticeable horological oxymoron. To compound the problem, the three disks have to jump exactly at the moment the seconds hand hits the 60 second mark. I mention all of this by way of noting that although it has been around for a while, the Lange Zeitwerk still represents a major technical milestone. The category of watches with hour and minute digital displays is minute; two examples are F. P. Journe’s Vagabondage II, and, of course, the Harry Winston Opus 3.
The Zeitwerk was launched by Lange in 2009 and it was to put it mildly, something of a shock to those of us who had followed Lange’s progress since the rebirth of the brand in 1994. The identity of Lange as a new company, was firmly rooted in a purposely conservative interpretation of high end German watchmaking, and watchmaking in Glashütte in particular, and though the Lange 1 was undoubtedly unusual from a design perspective, it still partook of the slightly eccentric, obsessively detailed approach to watchmaking that characterized Lange’s production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a foundational model for the relaunch, the Lange 1 established Lange’s new identity rather than going against an existing one. The Zeitwerk by contrast was a real departure from anything Lange had done both before and after the 1994 reboot, and though it’s now an honored elder – 2009 was after all fourteen years ago now, and there has been a lot of water under the bridge for Lange in particular and the watch industry in general – it was at the time, almost shocking.
Yes, the digital display had its antecedents in the clock Ferdinand Adolphe Lange had helped to create for the Dresden Semper Opera house, in 1841 – the clock, which had a five minute jumping hours and minutes display, was situated above the stage, and the idea was to let people know the time without their having recourse to repeaters, whose chimes would have disturbed the performances. At 180-plus years old, though, the argument that the Zeitwerk was directly descended from the Semper Operal clock didn’t really move the needle in terms of acceptance for a lot of Lange fans. Now, however, with close to 20 different models having been introduced and with enthusiastic adoption of the Zeitwerk by Lange collectors, the initial shock has not just worn off – it’s become deeply rooted enthusiasm.
One of the most compelling models of the Zeitwerk is the Zeitwerk Lumen, which has luminous material applied to the disks as well as a semi-translucent dial. The numerals in the windows showing the time glow brightly and there is a softer glow coming through the dial from the concealed disks. While the translucent dial makes for a very beautiful nocturnal lighting effect, it’s also necessary for keeping the numerals charged with light when they aren’t displaying the actual time – if the were hidden completely, their glow would be extremely faint when new numbers were switched into the time display. The coating on the dial is designed to allow ultraviolet radiation from sunlight (or I suppose, any other kind of light that radiates in the UV spectrum) to charge the lume on the disks.
The Zeitwerk Lumen came out surprisingly quickly after the launch of the first Zeitwerk – the first Lumen was launched in 2010. That it came hard on the heels of the first Zeitwerk is an interesting fact to try to interpret – development time for watches is usually measured in years, not months, so the fact that the Lumen came so soon after the Zeitwerk launch would seem on the face of it to indicate that Lange had the Lumen in mind for product planning from the very beginning.
Regardless of when the idea for a luminous Zeitwerk began to become a watch, it remains one of the most beautiful watches (if you ask me) that Lange has ever made. The Honeygold version we’re looking at this week is a relative latecomer, having been launched as a limited series in 2021, but the contrast of Honeygold with the central bridge for the time displays, as well as the contrast between the warmth of the case material and the cool glow of Super-LumiNova, makes it one of the most visually attractive Zeitwerks as well as one of the most seductive watches Lange has ever made.
The Zeitwerk Lumen has a number of unusual features but there is a lot more to it than just stunt watchmaking. Complications that are off the beaten path can impress very much initially, but once the novelty wears off, so may the appeal. This has since 2009 not been the case with the Lange Zeitwerk, and the Lumen version manages to take what was already a radically unusual design – both aesthetically and mechanically – and push it even further in the direction which made it successful in the first place. It’s a very rare example of a new and unusual complication which proved, over the years, to have remarkable staying power.
Visit Langepedia for a concise history of the Zeitwerk Lumen, as well as the Zeitwerk overall.