Union Glashütte
Brand history
Union was born on the initiative of Johannes Dürrstein, a watch dealer in Dresden from 1874 and for years a distributor of A. Lange & Söhne, who on 1 January 1893 opened his own manufacture in Glashütte, the "Glashütter Uhrenfabrik Union". His stated aim was to offer the same quality and precision as the Glashütte watch houses at more accessible prices, without compromising on finishing: a principle the brand still upholds today. In that same year, 1893, the company presented a grand complication pocket watch at the Chicago World's Fair, and in 1901 it completed "La Fabuleuse", one of the most complicated pocket watches of its time with 816 components, perpetual calendar, moon phases and double chronograph — a technical ambition far from obvious for a brand founded on the promise of accessibility.
After Dürrstein's death, between 1901 and 1903, the company went through a period of uncertainty over succession; the Great Depression hit Glashütte's watchmaking industry hard and Union production stopped around 1926. The company was formally struck off the German commercial register in 1936, remaining absent from the market for sixty years: a suspension that sets Union's history apart from that of the town's other historic manufactures, some of which were merged after the war into the state-owned VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe.
The brand returned to activity in 1996, revived as a subsidiary of Glashütte Original on the initiative of Heinz W. Pfeifer, and in 1997 presented its first post-war wristwatch collection. In 2000 the Swatch Group acquired Glashütter Uhrenbetrieb GmbH together with the Union brand; since 2008 Union Glashütte has been an independent brand within the group, with its own production in Glashütte (expanded in 2012), positioned as an accessible gateway to "Made in Glashütte" watchmaking, alongside the more expensive Glashütte Original.
