DUROWE (Deutsche Uhrenrohwerke) is a German watch movement manufacturer that in the 1970s was the largest producer of watch movements in Germany.
History
In the early 20th century, the German watch-making industry primarily used movements manufactured in Switzerland. To help the German watch-making industry become independent of these Swiss movement manufacturers, DUROWE was founded in 1933 by Erich Lacher. Erich was the son of Frieda Lacher, the co-founder of the German watch maker Lacher & Co ("LACO").
Erich Lacher intended DUROWE to supply not only LACO but other German watchmakers as well. DUROWE grew strongly in the 1930s, with the number of movements produced peaking at 30,000 per month until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, DUROWE continued to manufacture movements, in particular the large chronometer-grade movements used in the Beobachtungsuhren (B-Uhr) commissioned by the German government for use by the Luftwaffe, of which Laco was one of five manufacturers.
At the end of the war, the DUROWE factory in Pforzheim was destroyed by an Allied bombing raid. However, DUROWE and Laco had recommenced production by 1949. With the assistance of the Marshall Plan, a five-storey building to house the Laco and DUROWE operations was built which housed more than 1,400 workers by the middle of the 1950s. Production of movements rose to 80,000 per month.
During the 1950s, DUROWE developed a number of innovative movements, including one of the first German automatic movements and some of the slimmest German movements manufactured at the time. However, due to a downturn in business, the DUROWE and Laco brands were sold to the Timex Corporation on 1 February 1959. The primary motivation for the purchase was so that Timex could gain access to research that DUROWE had done into electronic timepieces, however the watches were generally not commercially successful. Six and a half years later, on 1 September 1965, DUROWE was purchased by the Swiss movement manufacturer ETA SA to gain access to the European markets of the then European Economic Community. ETA accordingly re-focused DUROWE on the production of mechanical watch movements.
However, DUROWE was to be one of the many victims of the Quartz crisis and by the end of the 1970s the firm had stopped production.
In 2002, Jörg Schauer, the owner of the STOWA and Schauer watch brands, purchased the rights to the DUROWE brand and plans to recommence production of DUROWE-branded movements in the future. According to DUROWE's website, this movement is likely to be the Calibre 7440, a hand-wound movement based upon the Unitas 6498, and the aim of DUROWE is to produce 200-500 movements by the end of 2010, first to be used in STOWA and Schauer watches but later made available to third party brands.