Last month, I had the pleasure of having dinner in the house pictured here. It is owned by the son of the last individual owner of IWC. I felt like I was going back almost 100 years.
Herr Homberger looks strikingly like his father. An engaging man, he owns a watch dealership in Zurich, among other investments, and spends considerable time hunting. Herr Homberger’s house is filled with trophies from his hunts.
His lovely wife proudly showed me her IWC watch –it was a family heirloom from the 1920, remarkable not for a unique movement but beautiful gold work, including its bracelet. When I asked if she accompanied her husband on his hunts, she told me she sometimes serves as a “beater”. When I asked “what”, I learned that’s a person who makes noise in order to rouse a wild boar.
That said, a few words about the Homberger-lineage, which starts with the Rauschenberg family:
The first owner from the Rauschenbach family was Johann Rauschenbach-Vogel, who was a local machine manufacturer in Schaffhausen. He bought the company in 1880, but died a year later and IWC was taken over by his son, Johannes Rauschenbach-Schenk at age 25.
With the help of a key IWC employee Urs Haenggi, Johannes Rauschenbach-Schenk ran the company until his death in 1905. Then his widow, two daughters and their husbands, Ernst Jakob Homberger (director of G. Fischer AG in Schaffhausen) and Dr. Carl Jung, became the new owners of IWC.
Later, E.J. Homberger took over the company as sole proprietor and continued until his death in 1955.. His son Hans Ernst Homberger then became the last of the Rauschenbach heirs to run IWC. In the 1970s. with the quartz crisis, he was forced to sell the company to VDO-Mannesman. He died in 1986 at the age of 77.
His son, who looks remarkably like his father, subsequently moved from Zurich into the family house, shown here, in Schaffhausen. When I remarked on the striking resemblance, he told me ”well, it at least shows that I’m legitimate”.
