It all began in 1822 in a town called Schwenningen Germany.  Johannes Schlenker made clocks under the Schlenker name.  In 1883 Jakob Kienzle married into the Schlenker family renaming the business SCHLENKER & KIENZLE.  In 1897 Jakob became the sole owner and Kienzle was founded.  Rolls Royce used their clocks from 1910 and in Germany, almost every car had a Kienzle clock in them.  The legendary Kienzle 8 day Aviation clock was fitted to aircraft from 1932.  In 1956 he made a series of automatic watches with the marketing as the “People's Automatic Watch”.  In the 1970s they became the biggest wristwatch manufacturer in the Federal Republic of Germany.  They have continued to grow and expand founding Kienzle AG in 2002 in Hamburg.  In 2008 they move their operations to Kienzle House Hamburg. 

This Rare NOS Kienzle Life 2002 Jump Hour was a 1970’s vision of the future.  The asymmetrically shaped case is made of stainless steel and chrome.  Very much like the cars of the 1970s that used a lot of chrome finishing.  Brushed and polished surfaces transition with crisp edges.  A lug to lug length of 42mm and a thickness of 10.5mm gives the watch an excellent wrist presence.  A flat crystal sits above a brushed silver dial.  Square framed windows show the hours in 24-hours in red and the 12 -hours in white with an arrow showing the direction of the jump hour disc.  Next, a square framed window showing the minutes in white with an arrow indicating the direction of the jump hour disc.  At 6 o’clock we have a smaller framed window showing the seconds.  Text is precisely printed with the brand and the model name.  On the reverse, a snap-off stainless steel case back.  Inside a manually-wound, pin lever movement.  The watch comes fitted on its original Kienzle 20mm strap with a signed buckle and also comes with its original Kienzle presentation box.

What we think

This watch reminds me of the film "2001: A Space Odyssey."  They believed some crazy things about how the world would look and be in 2001 and this watch did the same with its thought process of how watches would look in 2002.  Very much of its time due to the space race and landing humans on the moon, we thought the possibilities were endless and imagination ran wild, what an incredible time it must have been.