As the world starts to open up, the days of GMT watches being irrelevant to our lives seem to be fading away, and travel has become something that most of us can look forward to in the near future. This makes the new UNIVERSALZEIT by Moritz Grossmann the perfect watch that one might consider acquiring in preparation for our upcoming journeys. 

The UNIVERSALZEIT – translated as “Universal Time” in German is an exceptional watch and an example of the out of the box thinking that I have come to appreciate from Moritz Grossmann. Now this watch is not strictly a worldtimer, but you could very well think of it as one given the ingenious way that it works. Somehow through the design it manages to be more useful than a typical GMT, and yet get close enough to a worldtimer in utility and function, and does this through unconventional means.  

Consider the story of how I tried to understand it when I was first told about it last week and shown only a picture of it.  

Normally when I look at a new watch, I am quickly able to determine how it works, based on the many watches I have already been familiar with in the past. The Universalzeit was different. It looked like a worldtimer of course with its world map on the dial labeled with cities on it, but there wasn’t the typical city ring or 24 hour ring around its periphery that would move to indicate the time in a different time zone. 

Instead the dial contains a number of small circular windows spread around seemingly showing the hour at that labeled location on the world map. 

I pondered the mystery for some time and it was getting increasingly uncomfortable that I could not solve it. Then suddenly I formed a theory. I remembered one of my favorite watches from Moritz Grossmann that I have covered before, the GMT, which used an ingenious finger pointer moving around the edge of the dial pointing at a 24 hour scale. That mechanism was surely the key. If there was a disc under the dial that would jump 15 degrees every hour like a normal GMT hand would, then this might be how the watch would work. 

Of course I didn’t know if it was correct because I couldn’t figure out in my mind how that disc would look like, and how all the hour numerals could be aligned. 

Well sure enough, after some digging through the press release I came across this picture of that very disk. 

It turns out that I was correct. The disc does jump 15 degrees – (it’s 360 degrees divided by 24 hours after all), and here is how the numerals were printed. It’s simple when you understand how it works, the genius part is coming up with that idea in the first place. 

So my next question was, why were the cities shown on the dial chosen? There were some that had larger fonts and were directly next to a window, and others that were smaller that were not.

Well, it turns out that my initial guess – that these cities were the location of Moritz Grossman dealers was incorrect. The real reason is more pragmatic, and is because these cities are not affected by daylight savings time. This means that the time indicated in the windows next to them would be stable throughout the year. These cities include – Phoenix, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Dubai, Singapore and Tokyo 

The other labeled cities are on the map, perhaps as a way to help users guesstimate the time there with reference to the other cities that have windows and are as follows: New York, Mexico City, London, Addis Ababa, London, Moscow and Hong Kong. 

What we have here is a watch that has a GMT complication as its basis, but extended upon in function through the imaginative rethinking of the display elements such as the dial and the disk. What can I say? Bravo!

How do you set the time with this watch then? It’s quite simple actually. All you do is choose a timezone you would like to set first. Say Singapore, and adjust the crown at 3 o’clock such that the current time is the same as the time in the Singapore time window on the dial. Ignore the main hour hand for now. Once Singapore time is set, you have also at the same time, instantly set all the other timezones in the world. 

Then using the crown at 10 o’clock, you turn it to jump the hour hand to the correct time where you are locally. Then you’re set, and all without disturbing the hour numerals in the city windows on the map.

How do you use this watch while traveling then? Well, if you want to set your main hands to the local time, use the crown at 10 o’clock again, and jump the hour hand to the correct time, without disturbing the rest of time time-zones shown – just like a normal true GMT watch.   

Aesthetically this launch model comes with a galvanized dial base with a sunray finish in a luminous blue tone for the water of the oceans, which contrasts nicely with the salmon-coloured continents. Although like many worldtimers we have seen before, this is a model that is ripe for new variations, which should be interesting to see in the future.  

Now just to be clear, this watch is not a limited edition, but is a new model in the standard collection. However it premiered yesterday (23rd Feb 2022) with Sincere Fine Watches, a respected watch dealer that has just recently acquired the rights to represent Moritz Grossmann in Singapore. Because of this, the new UNIVERSALZEIT  (priced at SGD 76,500 including taxes) will be exclusively showcased in Singapore at the Sincere Fine Watches boutique at Takashimaya S.C., unit 01-12 from the 23rd February till the 23 March 2022.

Contact them if you want to have a look at the watch now if you’re in Singapore, or if you are elsewhere, your local dealer should be able to have it after the exclusivity period is over. 

Technical Specifications: UNIVERSALZEIT | MG-003072

Movement: Manufactory calibre 100.7, manual winding, regulated in five positions

No. of parts: 292

Jewels: 31 jewels, of which one in a pressed gold chaton

Escapement: Lever escapement

Oscillator: Shock-resistant Grossmann balance with 4 inertia screws and 2 poising screws, Nivarox 1 balance spring with No. 80 Breguet terminal curve, Gustav Gerstenberger geometry

Balance: Diameter: 14.2 mm, frequency: 18,000 semi-oscillations/hour

Power reserve:  42 hours when fully wound

Functions: Hours, minutes and seconds, centre second with stop second,

Operating elements: Grossmann manual winder with pusher/ Crowns in stainless steel to wind the watch and set the time, pusher in stainless steel to start the watch; crowns in stainless steel to correct the hour hand

Case dimensions: Diameter: 44.5 mm, height: 13.78 mm

Movement dimensions:  Diameter: 36.4 mm, height: 7.45 mm

Case: Three-part, stainless steel

Dial: Solid silver, windows with rhodium-plated bevel

Dial disc: Painted and printed

Hands: Manually crafted, polished steel

Crystal/display back: Sapphire crystal, antireflective coating on one side

Strap: Hand-stitched alligator leather with prong buckle in stainless steel 

Special features: Grossmann balance; hand setting override and start of movement with lateral pusher; space-saving, modified Glashütte stopwork with backlash; adjustment with Grossmann micrometer screw on cantilevered balance cock; pillar movement with 2/3 plate and pillars made of untreated German silver; balance cock and escape-wheel cock hand-engraved; broad horizontal Glashütte ribbing; 3-band snailing on the ratchet wheel; separately removable clutch winding mechanism; stop seconds for hand setting; central second wheel; newly developed module for displaying the full hours in selected metropolitan areas; correction mechanism at 10 o’clock to adjust the hour hand when changing one’s own location

So what is the Moritz Grossmann Tremblage?

Well, it’s essentially a watch with the time and small seconds from the Benu-Heritage collection, with the main difference being the fantastic amount of hand-engraving on the dial.

Created to celebrate the 13th anniversary of Moritz Grossman, this is a watch that has been decorated with a lavish amount of attention, and using an old engraving technique called “tremblage”, which comes from the French word “tremblant” which means “to tremble”.

It’s exactly how you might imagine it to be – the engraver had to set one corner of the burin into the metal and constantly move it back and forth, from right to left, from one corner to the other, to create the uneven surface on the dial. The end result is a dial that seems to sparkle when moving it in the light.

For the engraver, the main difficulty is in making sure that the resultant texture is evenly done. So while there is some amount of looseness in how the pattern is made, the amount of force that is used has to be consistent throughout.

And yet that’s not even the most impressive part about the dial. The parts of the dial that you see, all the numerals of the hours, the edge of the circular small seconds subdial and even the historic “M. Grossmann” logo from 1875 are not mounted appliqués. Instead they have been raised from the blank German silver dial by removing the surrounding material like relief sculpture, and then given a flat polish that contrasts well with the rough background.

This additional layer of hand work that needs to be done, which when combined with the “tremblage” engraving after that, then coupled with the heat treated to a brown-violet hue hands does in sum, make an end result that will appeal to those who appreciate a fair amount of craftsmanship in their watches.

This attitude extends as well to the manually wound calibre 100.1 seen through the glass case back, which is of a pillar structure, and with components made out of German silver that are all elaborately hand finished to the level, some say, of their more well known Glashütte based neighbour.

There are two case variations of this watch, one in 18K rose gold with dark brown alligator strap (SGD$76,900) and the other in stainless steel with dark blue alligator strap (SGD$56,300), and it is, as far as I’ve been told, not limited per se, but limited by production. That “tremblage” engraving does take time after all.

Technical Specifications

Oscillator: Shock-resistant Grossmann balance with 4 inertia screws and 2 poising screws, Nivarox 1 balance spring with No. 80 Breguet terminal curve, Gustav Gerstenberger geometry
Balance Diameter: 14.2 mm, frequency: 18,000 semioscillations/hour
Power reserve: 42 hours when fully wound
Functions: Hours and minutes, subsidiary seconds with stop second, Grossmann manual winder with pusher
Operating elements: Crown in 750/000 gold/stainless steel to wind the watch and set the time, pusher in 750/000 gold/stainless steel to start the movement
Case dimensions: Diameter: 41.0 mm, height: 11.35 mm
Movement dimensions: Diameter: 36.4 mm, height: 5.0 mm
Case: Three-part, precious metal/stainless steel
Dial: German silver, tremblage
Hands: Manually crafted, steel, annealed to a brown-violet or blue hue
Crystal/display back Sapphire crystal, anti-reflective coating on one side
Strap: Hand-stitched alligator leather with prong buckle in
precious metal/stainless steel
Special features: Dial tremblage, Grossmann balance; hand setting override and start of movement with lateral pusher; space-saving modified Glashütte stopwork with backlash; adjustment with Grossmann micrometer screw on cantilevered balance cock; movement with 2/3 plate and pillars made of untreated German silver; 2/3 plate, balance cock and escape-wheel cock hand engraved; grained train bridge; 3-band snailing on the
ratchet wheel; raised gold chatons with pan-head screws; separately removable clutch winding mechanism; stop seconds for hand setting

It’s a brand new watch from Moritz Grossman for 2019 which has a GMT complication that builds upon the beautifully engineered and innovation ATUM Date from 2017.  

A strong foundation 

When Moritz Grossman launched the ATUM Date* in 2017, I thought it was an act of pure genius. The reason is very simple when you consider the other brands that exist in Glashütte that are already well established. Prior to the ATUM Date, Moritz Grossman did not have a watch in their collection that had a date complication. 

*now known simply as the DATE 

And in my musings over what could potentially come for the brand, I thought that a date complication would be the most logical thing to come next as it would be the most useful. However for Moritz Grossman, making a date complication as you would normally expect, via a little window in the dial, just would not do. For a brand like this used to doing things the hard way, it would have to be quite special

But then there was a problem. If you are Moritz Grossman, you are in the vicinity of two brands that have watches that feature a big date, A Lange & Söhne with their outsized date, and Glashütte Original with their Panorama Date, in your home town of Glashütte in Germany.  Even though the way that they implement the feature is different technically, in function, they are the same – to make the date easier to read by making it bigger. With two of Glashutte’s most premium brands already making watches with such a feature, it just would not do for Moritz Grossman to follow the same path. 

So what could they do? I thought about this for a long time, and my conclusion was that it would probably be best to avoid the date complication altogether, since there was no way that they could come up with something that would look nice and showcase innovation. 

How wrong I was. 

At Baselworld 2017, Moritz Grossman showed me a watch that had a date complication that was unlike anything I had seen. Basically the date works by having two metal fingers that move along the edge of the dial with the date track printed on it, bracketing the numbers to show the current date, and jumping to the next one at midnight. This new (Swiss Patent Pending) system does not work from the centre, but from a peripheral ring, and has the ability to be adjusted in either direction at any time while the movement continues to run. Of note as well is that after the date crown at 10 o’clock is pulled out and turned in the desired direction to line the marker to the current date, when the crown is pushed back, a spring causes the date ring with the marker to precisely engage in the right position.

I was shocked, but in a pleasant way, that this idea had been thought of and executed so well. It was not only innovative and refreshing way, it was also, in the context of needing a differentiating factor from the two other premium Glashütte brands, simply genius. 

So you might be wondering at this point – why am I talking about the ATUM Date when this article is about the GMT?

The GMT – a continuation of a brilliant idea

Well the new GMT basically takes off from where the ATUM Date left off, essentially using the same innovative system that was invented, and applying some new modifications to achieve the GMT function. 

So here, instead of making the metal finger brackets jump every 24 hours in the DATE, now, a single metal finder jumps every 1 hour to indicate GMT. Similarly, the system is adjusted with the crown at 10 o’clock, and likewise, it can be done forwards and backwards at will. 

So if you’re thinking about the way it works, you might suddenly realise that this watch is not a true GMT, in the sense that the GMT hand stays constant, while adjustment is performed on the local hour hand, depending on the new timezone that you are travelling to. 

Yes, this is true, and it is a function of the fact that the technical design came from the ATUM Date. Yet really, when you consider how the complication performs its function and the innovative way that it came about, I think that the horological judge in me, finds this fact wholly acceptable. 

The GMT comes in a 41mm case and is available in 18K rose or white gold with champagne and silver dial options. It sits very nicely with a case thickness of 11.85mm, which unsurprisingly is also the same case thickness as the ATUM Date. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. 

As a concluding thought, I’ve been very impressed with the way that Moritz Grossmann has developed and grown over the past 10 or so years. Since CEO, Chrstine Hutter founded the brand in 2008 with only a mailbox, and working from her kitchen table in Glashütte, the brand has progressed slowly but surely, and in the intervening years, the company has grown to 50 employees and has produced a full collection of beautiful watches with a clear identity.

What she has achieved in this relatively short time is nothing short of amazing and her efforts deserve to be applauded. Even more amazing is the fact that she has directed her team to produce watches that have strong differentiation factors from her two established neighbours, producing watches like the ATUM Date, the self-winding HAMATIC, and the BENU Tourbillon. 

Now let’s see how the brand can innovate further, and come up with a watch with both a date and a GMT. If they succeed, it should be quite a special watch.

[ninja_tables id=”2430″]