Franz Hermle, a clockmaker with the goal to produce high-quality timepieces, is responsible for the Hermle clock company’s creation, as are many other well-known American clock firms like Seth Thomas and Ingraham. The Hermle Company is a success story from the twentieth century, while the big American clock firms can trace their roots back to the early 1800s. In the German town of Gosheim, close to the state of Wurttemberg, the Franz Hermle Clock Company was founded in 1922, just as Germany was starting to recover from World War I.
Amazingly, the new German company thrived at a time when the global economy was entering the Great Depression and American clock businesses were fighting to stay in business. The Hermle clock firm was a global leader in the production of high-quality clock movements by the early 1930s. Franz Hermle had an eye for efficiency and employed the most recent contemporary technology for creating clock movements when other clock businesses were still utilizing nineteenth century methods.
Franz Hermle, like other skilled clockmakers, passed on his knowledge of the craft to his four sons Gebhard, Alfred, Hans, and Heinrich, renaming the business Franz Hermle & Sohn. Franz Hermle and his sons continued the success story by prospering after World War II devastated Germany, when many of the large American businesses were unable to regain their former position as the industry’s leaders in clockmaking and were soon to vanish from the scene. Franz Hermle and Sohn moved into the production of clocks and clock accessories in addition to clock movements. When Franz Hermle passed away in 1953, his sons received the business.
The third generation of Hermle clockmakers is currently in charge of Franz Hermle and Sohn. The business is still focused on manufacturing quality mechanical and quartz movements, as well as other clock parts, in a computerized and automated setting.
With exports to more than 100 nations, Franz Hermle and Sohn is a significant provider of clock movements on a global scale. “You may not know our name, but we are the source who keeps the clock industry humming,” their advertisement declares. According to the company’s boast, they produce “the broadest assortment of mechanical and quartz movements accessible anywhere,” which are utilized in clocks all over the world.
Franz Hermle and Sohn is a preeminent provider of clock dials and pendulums in addition to being a world leader in the production of clocks and movements. The business also makes ornamental weight shells for weight-driven contemporary clocks, particularly grandfather clocks.