Dugena

Dugena's origins go back to 1883 in Switzerland, when Gottlieb Hauser founded the "Corporation d'Horlogers Suisse", which in 1901 became "Union Horlogère" and adopted the Alpina brand. Around 1909 a German subsidiary was born in Glashütte, the "Präcisions-Uhrenfabrik Alpina"; in 1917 several watchmaking factories merged into the "Deutsche Uhrmachergenossenschaft Alpina", with its headquarters moved to Berlin in 1927 — a date, 1917, that the brand still cites today as its founding year.

During the Second World War, restrictions imposed by the Allies prevented the use of the Alpina brand on German territory: in 1942 the Berlin management renamed the company DUGENA, an acronym for "Deutsche Uhrmacher-Genossenschaft Alpina", adopting the circle-inscribed-in-a-triangle logo that the brand still retains today.

Based in Darmstadt since 1948 under the leadership of Willi Tempel, Dugena experienced the German economic boom of the 1960s and '70s (present in around 2,000 points of sale by 1973), and in that decade also offered racing chronographs with a design close to that of Heuer, so much so that they are remembered by collectors today as the "poor man's Heuer". Having weathered the quartz crisis with quality quartz lines, the brand joined the EganaGoldpfeil group in 1993; after the death of its longtime helmsman Hans-Jörg Seeberger in 2007, operations passed to Nova Tempora GmbH in 2009.