Germany’s best apprentice watchmaker | Sächsische.de

The 19-year-old has already achieved one thing. He is Germany’s best of all 150 watchmaker apprentices trained by the chambers of crafts. He won this title at this year’s national competition for journeyman watchmakers in Würzburg. There he prevailed against three other state winners. “The tasks were very, very tough. We had to make four components of a watch in eight hours,” he says. “I finished five minutes before the end.”

Wempe Hamburg answered first

It is not family-related that he became a watchmaker. “There are craftsmen and office workers in my family, but no watchmakers”. He gained his first experience in the watch industry as a ninth grader at Lange Uhren GmbH. He applied for a one-week internship and was accepted. “We filed a balance cock. Filing to a tenth of a millimeter was new to me.” It wasn’t that difficult for him because he did a lot of handicrafts himself at home. “I built model ships out of metal and wood without instructions.”

After all, he liked working at Lange so much that he decided to become a watchmaker. In the tenth grade he applied to four Glashütte watch manufacturers. Wempe reacted first. The personnel department from Hamburg answered for a telephone interview. Shortly afterwards, I was invited to a job interview in Glashütte. There he met Elisabeth Gläser, head of training. The conversation went well. “It was just great.” Two days later he was accepted. At the same time, another invitation to another interview was received. “But I canceled that.”

He started his apprenticeship in 2017. From the beginning it was clear to Maximilian Stolzenberg that he would not move to Glashütte. “I have my friends in Dresden.” Glashütte is a pretty small town. But there was not enough going on there. “Only the kebab shop is open at the weekend.” The man from Dresden preferred to commute. There’s a good connection with the train, he says. Only in winter there were occasional problems, he recalls. “I also fell by the wayside.”

Kudos from the instructors

He liked the training a lot. And this was also noticed by trainers like Jörg Tamme, who taught him mechanical watches at the state vocational school. “Maximilian was very hardworking. He made interesting contributions from his world of work,” recalls the vocational school teacher. And Wempe trainer Elisabeth Gläser is also full of praise. “Mr. Stolzenberg is an extremely talented trainee who is always very committed to his job and to the team.” He is characterized above all by his high quality thinking and his enormous thirst for knowledge. Ultimately, he contributed to the Wempe success story. With him, the jeweler has been the third national winner in the last five years after Lisa Holstein (2016) and Alexander Springhorn (2019).

Maximilian Stolzenberg, meanwhile, appreciated the variety in the training. “Since Wempe is a jeweler, the company works with many watch brands.” There are around 30 brands. “We already work with different watches during our training.” Every trainee became a brand ambassador. That means that everyone is assigned a brand in the first year of their apprenticeship that they have to deal with intensively. Maximilian got Tudor. His first thought back then: “What kind of brand is it that I haven’t heard of?” But over time, the brand, which is a little sister of Rolex, has gained a lot of goodness. Now it’s his favorite brand.

Stations in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt

In his apprenticeship Maximilian learned the basic skills of sawing, turning and filing. He was not only able to work in Wempe watch production in Glashütte, but also in the company’s own repair shop and in the service of several branches of the jeweler. During his three-year apprenticeship, he worked in branches in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Nuremberg and Frankfurt am Main.

In the meantime Maximilian has left Glashütte and Saxony. He decided on one of the Wempe branches. “I liked the work in the branches best, especially the contact with customers.” Now he works in Nuremberg. “It’s very familiar here.” As a service watchmaker, he looks at the defective watches with the customers. “We do small repairs directly in-house, larger ones go to our central workshop in Hamburg,” he says. He is also doing well privately. “I can get along with the Franks, we both speak strange languages,” he says with a laugh. “I wanted to work in a city that I like and that is similar to my hometown.” And the Franconian metropolis meets both criteria.

He is also feeling the current corona crisis. Nevertheless: “Watches are still popularly bought. Before the lockdowns, the demand for high-quality, stable-value luxury goods rose again. Many invest their money in watches.” Companies like Rolex and Patek Philippe even have waiting lists: “It takes years to get your watch.” Glashütte watches are also popular with people.

At some point Maximilian would like to get his master’s degree. “That is being planned, but I don’t know when. I would like to gain more experience.” He already prepares for the master class in his spare time. The 19-year-old has set up a workshop at home where he repairs his watches. He is particularly proud of one device: “I bought the watch cleaning machine from the former head of the Hessian watchmaking school.”

And at some point Maximilian Stolzenberg would like to go back to Dresden. “This is my home. And Saxony is the most beautiful Free State in Germany”.

You can read more news from Dippoldiswalde and Glashütte here.

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