Kurt Klaus had his 90th birthday in October last year, entering the world in St Gallen, Eastern Switzerland in 1934. The watchmaker and engineer behind so many IWC Schaffhausen innovations, not only the perpetual calendar, has featured in some of the brand’s most memorable social media campaigns and festive season messages. They never miss an opportunity to highlight his contributions to watchmaking and to their collections since he joined their Service department as a watchmaker in 1957. He spent the better part of two decades, from 1970 to 1999, developing and building prototypes for new movements, debuting his Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Chronograph, Reference 3750, at the Basel watch fair in 1985.
It was the successor to his annual calendar, developed while he was making complications for pocket watches, and evidence of genius at many levels. Comprising just 81 parts, set simply by turning the crown, this was an industry first notable also because the future of mechanical watches had been so precarious during the quartz crisis of the seventies. His timepiece could recognise the different lengths of the months and insert a leap day every four years, working without manual adjustments until the year 2100.
Other achievements include overseeing the integration of a calendar module into a movement from the 50000 calibre family, leading to the launch of the first Portugieser Perpetual Calendar (Ref. IW5021) in 2003 with an enhanced moon phase accuracy of 577.5 years.
Klaus was also crucial in designing IWC’s first perpetual calendar with digital displays for the date and the month – the Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month (Ref. IW3761), introduced in 2009. He was involved in developing several new in-house movements, the split-seconds mechanism, the world time module and the mechanical depth gauge for divers’ watches. His contributions also made a difference in the development of the Il Destriero Scafusia in 1993, the most complicated wristwatch in the world at the time. The prestigious “Aiguille d’Or” Grand Prix was awarded to IWC Schaffhausen for its remarkable Portugieser Perpetual Calendar watch, based on the perpetual calendar by Kurt Klaus invented in 1985.
— Kurt Klaus and Markus Bühler
Klaus retired in 1999 as IWC’s Former Head of Development and Construction, but that certainly didn’t stop him from working on new movements, assisting his former colleagues in Schaffhausen, supporting young watchmakers, and travelling the world to give speeches and presentations. His wife Martha remained a pillar of support through their nearly 70 years together. Seeing him at important industry events like Watches and Wonders is a highlight for watch lovers like me – and he’ll always stop, greet and pose for a photograph.
I interviewed him in 2021 and remember how his energy and humour inspired me. He told me he is a great-grandfather but doesn’t feel like one. He told me he used to train racing dogs, and walking them used to help him problem-solve when he was making that first prototype. “It was not really a stress because I believed I could do it.”
During the pandemic, he and Martha walked their king poodle, Janosch, daily in the forest, keeping fit and staying young at heart, surrounded by nature.
