Montblanc 1858 Monopusher Chronograph / Credit: WatchProSite
Montblanc’s recently released 1858 Collection draws inspiration from a brand their parent company acquired in 2006, Minerva. Minerva is one of the many forgotten watch brands of old, victims to acquisition, bankruptcy or other. In this case, Montblanc’s 1858 Monopusher Chronograpgh features the Caliber 13-21 – a derivative of the famous Minerva Caliber 13-20. So, with the reemergence of Minerva’s heritage into the mainstream, it begs the question: what was Minerva?
Minerva was founded in 1858 by brothers Charles-Yvan Robert and Hyppolite Robert in the village of Villeret, in the Bernese Jura Mountains. The brothers originally established ‘H & C Robert’ as an établisseur and evetually the brand was taken over by their sons. The family registered the brand name ‘Minerva’ in 1887, originally using movements from Fabrique d'Horlogerie de Fontainemelon (FHF). One of the earliest confirmed in-house Minerva pocket watch movements was released in 1902. They followed that up with a foray into chronographs in the 1910s. Their chronographs were used widely in sports, as theirs were some of the first to measure time accurately to 1/100th of a second. Minerva’s aforementioned Caliber 13-20 was released in the early 1920s as a Minerva-branded monopusher chronograph. As a result of the Great Depression, the company was taken over by former employees and came to be controlled by the Frey family. However, Minerva was still a prominent brand and was even responsible for timekeeping at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The company remarkably survived the Quartz Attack, but saw the Frey family sell the company in 2000 to investors who sought to turn it into a haute horologerie brand. Eventually it was sold again to Richemont in 2006, where it remains to this day.
Ultimately, the tale of Minerva is the story of many old watch brands. Despite not selling their own timepieces today, these brands remain an influential part of the sector – with their blueprints and techniques still in use by the larger entities that own the rights to them today.