PUW

(Pforzheimer Uhren-Rohwerke GmbH, Pforzheim, Germany)

Movements

Details

By clicking onto the photos, you can access the detail pages of the movements

History

The watchmaker Rudolf Wehner, born in Dresden, founded the Pforzheimer Uhren-Rohwerke (PUW) in 1932, because the Foreign exchange situation of the German Reich was precarious and the import of Swiss ebauches was a burden of the German balance of payments.

In the early 1940s, the PUW had already 260 employees, but was also forced to produce detonators for the German Air Force and the military.

In 1945 the factory was almost completely destroyed in the large air raid on Pforzheim. After the war ended, a provisional production was established quickly, before they were able to move into its new built domicile in 1950.

The following years, PUW grew to become Germany’s largest wristwatch movement producer and made up to two million movements (manual wind and automatic) per year. They also made strong investments in research and development of electromechanical and quarz movements.

After the production terminated of the caliber families 660/1660, and 800/810 in 1979, they still produced quartz movements for a decade before their end was sealed in 1990 and the PUW was taken over by the Swiss Swatch Group.

An interesting detail on the side is that Rudolf Wehner also marketed watches with PUW movements himself by founding the Porta watch factory in 1948, which produced 200,000 watches per year at peak times.

(based on PUW official press release via [Josef M.Stadl, German Chronometric Society] (/supporters/j-m-stadl-dgc/))