The 2024 Prix Gaïa honours three new winners

On 19 September this year, Régis Huguenin-Dumittan, curator of the Musée international d’horlogerie (MIH) and chairman of the Prix Gaïa jury, presented the coveted trophies to three new personalities who have worked in the fields targeted by this distinction. This year’s awards focused on the production of watch cases, German historiography of time measurement and the management of an independent family business. Carine Bachmann, Director of the Federal Office of Culture, took part in the ceremony, which was held at the museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The awards were presented to:

• Jean-Pierre Hagmann, winner in the Craftsmanship and creation category, which, over the course of his long career, has brought the manufacture of watch cases to the pinnacle of excellene and honoured traditional methods. He has helped to cultivate crucial expertise in watchmaking, fostering a spirit of sharing and openness.
• Caroline Rothauge, winner in the History and research category, for her many foundational studies reviving the historiography of German time measurement with a cultural approach which brilliantly combines archive sources and material artefacts.
• Jasmine Audemars, winner in the Entrepreneurship category, for her efforts to ensure the constant and prodigious development of the family company, Audemars Piguet, allowing it to rise to the rank of multinational whilst retaining its independence and preserving its historic networks of suppliers.
  
  

Craftsmanship and creation: Jean-Pierre Hagmann
Born in 1940, Jean-Pierre Hagmann started his professional training in 1956 when he was apprenticed to Ponti Gennari in Geneva as a jewellery maker.

After a range of experiences in both Zurich and Geneva, he worked as a chainsmith for Jean-Pierre Ecoffey from 1966 to 1970, then as head of the case manufacture workshop and director of production between 1976 and 1983. Between these periods, he headed up the workshop and the after-sales service at Motor-sport Genève, where he prepared race car engines for the championships in Switzerland and France.

After spending a year developing new dials for Stern Créations, Jean-Pierre Hagmann started working for himself in 1984. He registered the maker’s mark JHP no.4130. He created cases for Svend Andersen and Franck Müller, then for the majority of the most prestigious brands in Switzerland.

At the end of 2018, aged 78, Jean-Pierre Hagmann transferred ownership of his workshop to Vacheron Constantin, a brand he worked for as a trainer in jewellery and case-making and as a restorer of heritage pieces.

He is one of the last master craftsmen able to design and create a watch case solely using traditional manually-operated machinery, such as saws, files, lathes and milling machines. Celebrated in the catalogues of auction houses, he is the most renowned of master case-makers. His “JHP” signature is known throughout the world and is much sought-after by collectors.

With his trademark indefatigable passion, Jean-Pierre Hagmann joined Akrivia in 2020 to pass on his expertise in the manufacture of steel, gold and platinum cases.

History and research: Caroline Rothauge
Born in Eckernförde in Northern Germany in 1981, Caroline Rothauge attended Lüneburg University from 2000, mainly studying social and cultural history and graduating with a master’s degree in modern and contemporary history, communication and journalism in 2007, with a year (2003-2004) spent in Santiago de Compostela as part of the Erasmus programme.

In 2008, she started her doctorate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, which she completed in 2012 with the submission of her thesis on the Spanish Civil War through film and television. She then took up a post as an assistant professor to the Chair of modern and contemporary history at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, before starting work at the Catholic Univer-sity of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in 2015. There she specialised in the cultural history of timescales through a research project led jointly with the Universities of Berlin (2017- 2018) and Freiburg (2019-2020), focusing on the role of time in daily life in the German Empire circa 1900.

In her research and teaching, Caroline Rothauge concentrated mainly on the history of time and time measurement in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Through this richly diverse academic journey, she has made a significant contribution to the exploration and diffusion of knowledge relating to the measurement of time and to time-based cultures, in an approach combining objects and various kinds of archives.

In 2021, she completed her professorial habilitation thesis in modern and contemporary history, which bore the title Zeiten in Deutschland 1879-1919. Konzepte, Kodizes. Konflikte (Times in Germany 1879-1919: Concepts, Codices, Conflicts), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Friedrich Kiessling.

Her research was undertaken in eight archive centres and based on printed source materials as well as the study of artefacts. This work, rich in empirical evidence, demonstrates a deep level of expertise and offers major new perspectives on the notions of time and how it was handled in around 1900. She shows how the negotiation processes around time in Germany were both extremely dynamic and riddled with conflict. Contrary to expectations, these processes did not lead to the standardisation of time, but rather to further pluralisation of time-based concepts.

In 2022, she received the prize for “best habilitation” from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt for her work on the history of time measurement in Germany. The edited version of her habilitation thesis was published in 2023 by Brill and quickly became a benchmark in the field. Before reaching this milestone, Caroline Rothauge had already published in prestigious academic journals, including the Historische Zeitschrift (2017) and German History (2021). The profile of, and interest in, her research into time is also underscored by the number of grants awarded and the many invitations to national as well as international seminars and conferenes.

Since 2023, Caroline Rothauge has been a professor of 19^th Century German and European History at the University of Hamburg. She has maintained a broad and constant interest in the history of time, both in her re-search and her teaching, particularly in the field of the standardisation of time in western industrialised countries. She has also created and led a course on the history of time in the 19^th century as well as several seminars on the conception and handling of time in the modern era.

Spirit of Enterprise: Jasmine Audemars
The great-granddaughter of Jules Louis Audemars, who co-founded the Audemars Piguet watch Manufacture with Edward Auguste Piguet in Le Brassus in 1875, Jas-mine Audemars was born in 1941 and grew up steeped in watchmaking in the Vallée de Joux, with both her father and grandfather working at the company. She spent her evenings listening to endless discussions about calibres, movements and dials, regularly visiting what they simply called “The Factory”.

At the same time, her English mother instilled in her a love of both travel and reading. After leaving school, she studied commerce in Lausanne before completing her studies at the University of Geneva, where she gained a degree in social science and economic history.

With her heart set on journalism, she worked for a number of daily papers in Geneva, before becoming an economic re-porter for the Journal de Genève in 1968. Jasmine Audemars was promoted to deputy editor in 1970, a post that she held until 1980, when she became the paper’s editor-in-chief. Here, she was responsible for editorial content and headed a team of around 60 journalists and freelance staff. During these years as an editorialist and analyst, her main areas of interest were the economy, international trade and foreign policy.

In 1992, she left the paper to take over from her father as Chairman of the Board of Audemars Piguet. Sitting on the Board since 1987, she already had a clear understanding of its mission: to maintain the independence of the company and keep it in the hands of the founding families, so that it could be passed on to future generations. This means preserving and enriching independent expertise in watchmaking, as well as monitoring the health of the company to ensure it is ready to face adversity at any time, whilst staying continuously focused on the long term.

At this time, Audemars Piguet was an SME distributing its watches from Le Brassus via a network of agents across the world. In the 1990s, when major groups were buying up companies in droves, Audemars Piguet started to verticalise its upstream operations, setting up in Le Locle, then in Meyrin. Downstream, the firm took over the distribution of its watches and, at the start of the 2000s, gradually started opening subsidiaries so that, by 2014, it had its own network of boutiques and AP Houses across the world. Wishing to raise the profile of the Vallée de Joux, Audemars Piguet also created the Musée Atelier and the Hôtel des Horlogers in Le Brassus, open to other brands and to visitors to the region.

Today, Audemars Piguet is a multinational with an over 2,900-strong personnel, annual production of around 54,000 watches, around 20 subsidiaries and more than 90 boutiques. Its turnover is around 2,200 million CHF. This development was made possible by the enterprising spirit shown by every stakeholder in the company along with a network of suppliers who share in the passion for Haute Horology.

In November 2022, Jasmine Audemars stood down from the Board of Directors. Since then, she has devoted her time to charity work, notably presiding over the Fondation Audemars Piguet pour les Arbres, founded in 1992, and the Fondation Audemars Piguet pour le Bien Commun, created in 2022.

Horizon Gaïa grant: Baptiste Tognet-Bruchet
Alongside the three categories used to honour leading figures in the watchmaking world, Horizon Gaïa, an incentive grant made possible thanks to the generosity of the Watch Academy Foundation, is awarded to encourage new talent in the fields recognised by the Prix Gaïa: Craftsmanship and Creation, History and Research, as well as Entrepreneurship. The grant serves to fund all or part of an individual project.

This year’s Horizon Gaïa grand was awarded to Baptiste Tognet-Bruchet, a history student at the University of Neuchâtel. With his “Guide to electronic watch archives” project, he aims to provide researchers with a working tool that will encourage new approaches and perspectives with respect to Swiss and international watchmaking history in the second half of the 20^th century.

September 26, 2024