Here is a very nice chess clock manufactured by the renowned producer Thiel / Ruhla. The company itself was founded in 1862 by two brothers, Georg and Christian Thiel, who rented out workshop space in Ruhla for the production of metal fittings for shoes and pipes. Despite being succesful, Georg Thiel left the company already in 1867 and was replaced by his brothers Reinhold and Ernst. The production of clocks started in 1890, when 70 clockmakers from Switzerland were employed for the production of pocket watches. These pocket watches, produced under the name "Fearless", were made with a case which was not screwed but tightened with bent metal sheets, which made it impossible to repair the watch. Since the retail price of the watches was only half of the usual costs for pocket watches, they triggered a large demand anyhow. Around 1897, Thiel produced around 4,000 pocket watches per day! A few years later, Thiel was the first watchmaker with a serial production of wristwatches for women (1906) and men (1908).

From 1901 on the founders retired and their sons Heinrich Thiel, Ernst-Edmund Thiel and Reinhold Thiel jun. took over the company. Reinhold Thiel acted as managing director, but was also very active in the public sector, inter alia as President of the Chamber of Commerce of Central Thuringia and since 1919 as Chairman of the German Clock Industry Trade Organisation. In both WWI and WWII, the company was focusing on the manufacturing of armaments (inter alia mechanical time fuzes for bombs). In the 1920's the company was rapidly expanding with branch production sites all over Thuringia and with commercial representations in Berlin, London and Paris. In the 1930's Thiel concentrated on armament production again and started the production of ammunition parts with a peak workforce of 10,000 workers, a large number of them being forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. During that time and due to Reinhold Thiel being closely associated with the Nazi regime in the 1930's and 1940's, the company was honored as a National Socialist Model Plant.

The chess clocks are said to be a mere bywork of the production of alarm clocks, but were used e.g. during tournaments organized during the Nazi regime (allegedly including the 1936 Olympics, but I could not find any proof for that). 

After the war, the Thiel family was expropriated by the Russian forces. The armament factories were destroyed, but the Russians kept the two clockworks in Ruhla and Apolda and formed them into a stock corporation under the name "Awtowelo". Reinhold Thiel, who managed to flee from the Russians, but got caught later by the American forces, was imprisoned by until 1948 due to his entanglement with the Nazi regime, tried to rebuild his enterprise twice, first in Göttingen, then in Kassel, but without success. The company was deleted from the company register in 1953. 

The factories in Ruhla continued to manufacture chess clocks under the Thiel brand and distributed under the name "Modell 603" until the late 1950s.