When Walter Lange passed away, the news came out in the midst of SIHH. In a way, it was a sadness distilled by a moment of perfect timing, as the founder of A. Lange & Söhne left us while we were surrounded by a collection of the works that the man had made possible. When asked how they could best pay tribute to their founder, CEO Wilhelm Schmid said “The best way to honor Walter Lange is to assure the continuity and the ongoing development of the company that he founded – in the way that he would have envisioned it.”

The 1815 “Homage to Walter Lange” is the physical embodiment of that idea. With this watch, a tribute to its founder, we also see the rich heritage of his family, and a glimpse of his vision for what A. Lange & Söhne should be.

“…the Lange ideal: Elegant minimalism, with great complexity at your command.”

The 1815 “Homage to Walter Lange” wristwatch comes in three different limited-edition versions available commercially. There are pink gold, yellow gold, and white gold models. But there is also a fourth, unique version, a one-off with a black dial in a case of stainless steel, which is a special tribute to Walter alone. All the models of the 1815 “Homage to Walter Lange” are beautiful, but the unique stainless-steel model is particularly striking.

There are references here (literally) to Walter Lange that you may have to look closely to see. The new watch caliber is designated L1924. (Walter Lange was born in 1924.) Also, the watch’s reference number is 297.078; the first three digits, 297, are Walter’s birthday, July 29.

The black enamel dial is ringed by a traditional railway-track minute scale. The look is a callback to the time of the pocket watch – indeed, it is a memory of the very pocket watches into which Walter Lange’s grandfather first installed the stoppable jumping seconds complication.

The stoppable jumping seconds hand dates back to an 1867 invention by Walter’s great-grandfather, Ferdinand Adolph Lange. Many mechanical watches utilize sweeping seconds, but there are times when you want to measure time down to the very moment. The 1815 “Homage to Walter Lange” allows you to choose; you can retain the usual sweeping seconds, or, with the push of a button, you can switch on the jumping seconds function and tick off the seconds, one by one. Ferdinand Adolph Lange first invented the function in 1867, and his son Emil (Walter’s grandfather) used it in a watch for the first time. It was one of Germany’s first patents, granted to A. Lange & Söhne in 1877. It was referred to then as a “one-second movement with a jumping hand.”

A. Lange & Söhne thinks that Walter Lange would have considered the 1815 with stoppable jumping seconds as “the perfect watch.” It is reduced to the essentials, but with the selection between sweeping and jumping seconds it grants the watch enthusiast a “puristic yet technically exciting complication.” That sums up the Lange ideal: Elegant minimalism, with great complexity at your command.