WATCHMAKER HEINRICH MOSER:
Heinrich Moser grew up in Schaffhausen in the traditions and experience of a watch making
dynasty that had become established over the generations. He learned the traditional watchmaker’s craft from his father, Erhard Moser, between 1820 and
1824. Subsequently broadened his knowledge in the
watch making town of Le Locle. His plan to succeed his father for the position of town watchmaker,
to which the Moser family had a claim was thwarted by the Town Council in Schaffhausen.As an ambitious and visionary watchmaker, Heinrich Moser decided to set up
business in Russia. Tsarist Russia at the time was regarded as an excellent labour and sales market and
a sound trading base for watches.
After several employed positions as a watchmaker, he founded his own company in St. Petersburg at the end of 1828. This marked the hour of inception of the greatly successful brand, Hy Moser & Cie. Alongside precision watches and watches designed as pieces of
jewelry, Heinrich Moser offered a range of simple watches. As he built up his trading network, he came to realize that a successful wholesaler should also be a
manufacturer thus established a watch factory in Le Locle in 1829, which produced watches exclusively for his businesses. This allowed him to guarantee the high quality of his products. Eventually, he was made an honorary citizen of Le Locle in acknowledgement of his services to the town in the Swiss
Jura.
Heinrich Moser’s constant quest for quality was crowned by success. He supplied the Imperial Court , various princes and the armed forces in Russia. Within
a few years, he was selling watches to Persia, China and Japan, as well as New York and Paris
where his brother Georg Moser was working as a watchmaker. Only 15 years after starting his company, Heinrich Moser was the undisputed market leader in the Russian watch trade. He returned to his home town of Schaffhausen as a prosperous watch manufacturer and merchant at the end of 1848.
The first internationally active company founded by Heinrich Moser was the St. Petersburg trading
as Hy Moser & Co. From this name, he developed the company signature in Latin and Cyrillic script, which was almost always accompanied by a medallion. Until about 1918, these symbols were the standard signature on all watches supplied by Moser’s watch company. In 1829, Heinrich Moser opened a watch factory in Le Locle, which also bore the name
Hy Moser & Co.
The Russian operation had to be abandoned in 1917 in the aftermath of the October Revolution. In about 1920, the State-owned “Central Watch Repair Workshop” was formed in Moscow from the remains of the Moser watch
businesses. Moser watches continued to be regarded as synonymous with work of the highest quality for some considerable time afterwards.
In 1966, the Government of the USSR presented one of its high-ranking military officers with an original Moser pocket watch in 18-carat gold, dating from the period before the expropriation and bearing an engraved dedication.
The name of Moser also died out in this branch of the family in 1923 with the death of Heinrich Moser’s only son, who had no male offspring. Dr. Jürgen Lange and the great-grandson of Heinrich Moser, Roger Nicholas Balsiger, jointly with private investors, founded the watch company Moser Schaffhausen AG in 2002. Dr. Lange also registered the original brand H. Moser & Cie again internationally.
Watches of "Henry Moser" were so popular it instigated huge production of
replicas. Thus the factory of Moser offered this disclaimer... "for elimination of cases of abusing by some dealers by the name of our firm we consider necessary to recommend wishing to get watches of our factory to pay special attention
to the inscriptions in French before a surname "MOSER & Ce" letters "Hy" as only with such brands and inscriptions watches are
authentic". These cautions are useful and to modern collectors of watches.
