Glashutte

The history of the Tutima brand began in Glashutte, a mythical city of horology whose name is known all over the globe as a byword for the best and most exclusive timepieces in the world. And a place in which Tutima is now once again present with a subsidiary, an exclusive production workshop in a building listed as a historic monument: the old railway maintenance depot in Glashütte. It heralds a new era in the history of Tutima, right at the very heart of the German art of watchmaking.

Glashütte is a small city located in Saxony's idyllic Muglitz Valley. Its development into a celebrated watchmaking center was anything but straightforward. The first apprentices in the former mining community were trained as watchmakers back in 1845. This was the start of a watchmaking industry that was to earn an excellent international reputation as the years went by. The town reached its heyday as a watchmaking center at the start of the 20th century, when precision pocket watches from Glashutte were among the most highly coveted and most exclusive timepieces of the day.

This brilliant era came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of World War I and the turmoil of the ensuing Great Depression. Finally, at the turn of the year 1926/1927, a new group of companies was founded under the management of 27-year-old Dr. Ernst Kurtz. This marked the birth of Tutima, the leading brand of the newly founded UROFA-UFAG conglomerate in Glashütte.

One of the company's legendary classics is the unmistakable Tutima Flieger Chronograph from the 1940s: a voluminous, nickel-plated brass case with screw-down case back ensured the manually wound movement was safely protected against damage. Luminous numerals in combination with striking luminous hands ensured excellent contrast and superb legibility, while the coin-edge rotating bezel with its unique red reference marker enabled precise times to be set.

The original: the Tutima Flieger Chronograph developed in 1939/1940 outfitted with stopwatch and flyback functions fitted with the UROFA Caliber 59.

By the year 1945, the Glashütte workshops had produced around 30,000 of the Tutima Flieger Chronograph before Russian troops brought production to an abrupt end. Pilots who still possessed such a watch after the war guarded it carefully as a unique specimen of engineering and horological history, and the chronographs became highly prized collector's items.

(Text Adapted from Tutima's web site).