Mauthe made clocks for 130 years — then quartz killed it in five

Friedrich Mauthe, a grocer in Schwenningen in the Black Forest, began trading clock parts and finished clocks from home-based watchmakers in 1844. His sons Christian and Jakob took over in 1876 and built a modern factory in 1881, transitioning from craft to industrial production. By 1900, the company employed more than 1,100 people and made a full range of alarm clocks, pendulum wall clocks, grandfather clocks, buffet clocks and office clocks — selling across Germany and internationally.

After World War II, Mauthe added wristwatches to its catalogue, producing its own mechanical movements including the Calibre 1001 (rectangular, hand-wound) and Calibre 1002 (round). In the 1950s, the company supplied watches to Volkswagen as service awards for drivers reaching 100,000 kilometres. The business remained in the fifth generation of the Mauthe family, with no outside investors and no pressure to modernise.

When quartz technology arrived in the early 1970s, Japanese manufacturers flooded the market with cheap, accurate electronic watches. Mauthe had no quartz capability and its management — the same family that had run the business for 130 years — hesitated to retool. The company tried to fight back with a novelty product called the 'Kiss-Kiss' alarm clock, which failed to regain market share. By 1975, the company was insolvent and production stopped.

The factory site was redeveloped into a shopping centre and car park. A gate from the original works was moved in front of the 1980s brutalist building that replaced it. In 2011, Bernd Mauthe revived the brand as Mauthe Uhrenmanufaktur, offering custom-made watches, but the original manufacturing company was gone.