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Lot Essay
Kurt Dietzschold was born in Dresden in 1852 and educated in Karlsruhe and Aachen where he studied engineering. Soon after he took over a workshop in Glashtte making calculators, instruments and precision clocks. He became close friends with leaders of the German clock industry including Adolph Lange, Moritz Grossmann and Ludwig Strasser, Director of the German watchmaking school.
It was Grossman who recommended that Dietzschold be offered the post of Director of the Clockmakers school in Karlstein. This school was near to closing and had only three pupils and one teacher! However within three years Dietzschold turned the school around filling it to capacity manufacturing clocks, instruments and machine tools, many of which were to his own design. His pioneering work laid the foundations for the development and expansion of the clock and watch industry in Germany.
In later life he suffered from extremely poor vision and then total blindness but still managed to publish technical articles and books relying mainly on his memory. He died in Karlstein in May 1922.
It would appear from the Riefler company records that this clock was presented to Dietzschold rather than actually bought by him.
The clock appears to be in remarkably original condition - even with the original wiring. On many occasions when a regulator went back to the Riefler workshops for cleaning, components such as the pendulum or suspension block were changed or up-graded which meant their serial numbers no longer matched their original factory specification. However on this example all the component serial numbers for No. 117 match the factory records
It was Grossman who recommended that Dietzschold be offered the post of Director of the Clockmakers school in Karlstein. This school was near to closing and had only three pupils and one teacher! However within three years Dietzschold turned the school around filling it to capacity manufacturing clocks, instruments and machine tools, many of which were to his own design. His pioneering work laid the foundations for the development and expansion of the clock and watch industry in Germany.
In later life he suffered from extremely poor vision and then total blindness but still managed to publish technical articles and books relying mainly on his memory. He died in Karlstein in May 1922.
It would appear from the Riefler company records that this clock was presented to Dietzschold rather than actually bought by him.
The clock appears to be in remarkably original condition - even with the original wiring. On many occasions when a regulator went back to the Riefler workshops for cleaning, components such as the pendulum or suspension block were changed or up-graded which meant their serial numbers no longer matched their original factory specification. However on this example all the component serial numbers for No. 117 match the factory records