Page 4 - GC-Mar-Apr-2026

Cuckoo Clocks

By Martin Ederer One misconception the English- complex moving parts possible. His- ings often now regarded as
uckoo clocks have taken speaking world has about cuckoo torically the central feature of all significant artworks in their own
their place as one of the most clocks is that they originated in cuckoo clocks is a set of mecha- right. By the 1870s, Beha was pro-
Crecognizable cultural sym- Switzerland. Admittedly the people nisms that (1) allow a small wooden ducing clock cases that resembled
bols of Germany. They are also one of the Black Forest and the people bird to emerge from a door, typically the sorts of houses that nobility lived
of the most popular souvenirs that of German-speaking Switzerland on the hour and the half-hour, as (2) in, the Herrenhäusle design. Other
tourists buy when visiting Germany. are very closely related as tribes. the strike train simultaneously gothic and Romanesque-style cases
In my own experience, I have seen The 1949 film noir The Third Man, strikes a spring steel wire gong and followed.
cuckoo clocks in the homes of nu- in which Orson Welles plays Harry (3) operates bellows that push air Eventually most of those designs
merous German Americans, but Lime, is largely responsible for the into two small wooden whistle pipes got obliterated by the Bahnhäu-
none in the homes of any of my myth as he dismissively mocks to give the two-note (descending sleuhr style in the 1850s, which first
relatives and friends in Germany, peacefulness and decency (along third) distinctive sound of the Euro- developed in Furtwangen. The ex-
Austria or Switzerland. Are they with some really distorted general- pean cuckoo bird. The pipes are ac- pansion of railroad networks in
perhaps more popular abroad than at izations about the Renaissance): tually known as gedeckt pipes, a southwest Germany became the in-
home? “[...] in Italy, for 30 years under the term describing a type of pipe organ spiration. In fact, the railroad-keep-
Be that as it may, cuckoo clocks Borgias, they had warfare, terror, component. By the way, there is an ers’ houses along the line, usually
are especially associated with the murder and bloodshed, but they pro- American Cuckoo bird, but its song equipped with prominent clocks,
Schwarzwald, the Black Forest re- duced Michelangelo, Leonardo da is very different, either sounding a Friedrich Eisenlohr, inspired the de-
gion, home to very inventive peo- Vinci and the Renaissance. In Swit- single note or other percussive sign for these indoor clocks. In fact
ple. In fact, it is not uncommon to zerland they had brotherly love, sounds. CUCKOO CLOCK, so-called Friedrich Eisenlohr, architect of the
encounter the entire phrase “Black they had five hundred years of de- Eventually two types of cuckoo railkeepers’ houses, submitted
Jagdstueck, Black Forest, ca.
Forest cuckoo clock” as both a name mocracy and peace – and what did clock designs developed, wall 1900, Deutsches Uhrenmuseum sketches for this clock design him-
and a descriptor. The Black Forest that produce? The cuckoo clock.” clocks driven by weights (probably self. That prototype has dominated
Furtwangen, Inv. 2006-013. Foto
region of Baden has been home for Perfectly obvious, though, is the the oldest designs) and later spring- by: Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furt- cuckoo clock design ever since.
centuries of cuckoo clock design Germanic origins of the concept and driven versions that could either Initially cuckoo mechanisms
wangen (Germany) Permission by:
and manufacture. the ingenious mechanisms that hang on walls or be placed on man- Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furtwan- were not considered an integral or
make the cuckoo clock with all its tels. Obviously, the weight-driven even necessary part of the design.
gen (Germany)
Beha changed all of that, and the
style became a hot seller. In the
models have proven the most popu-
lar. 1860s Beha began to ornately deco-
rate his clocks with wood carvings
Origins of the cuckoo clock are
shrouded in mystery. First mentions of leaves and filigree and fir-cone
style weights. Later in that decade,
of the concept begin to appear in
German and Italian accounts from Beha began to offer a Jagdstück
model which incorporated rich carv-
the 1600s. By the 1700s, accounts
increasingly make clear that cuckoo ings of birds and animals and any
other symbols that portrayed the for-
clocks mainly came from what is
today the Black Forest region of est and hunting culture. To put it
simply a (clock) star was born.
Germany not far from Freiburg im
Breisgau. Places like St. Georgen, A later design was a Swiss con-
tribution: clock cases resembling
Neustadt and Furtwangen became
prominent in the development and large chalet-style farmhouses repre-
sentative of various Swiss regions.
manufacturing history of the genre.
Early cuckoo clocks often found German manufacturers also em-
braced this design, creating their
their way into nobility’s collections
of curiosities. Early versions also own indigenous house styles of cas-
es.
often had flat faces covered with
paper or canvas and minimal cabin- The rest of the world eventually
embraced basic German designs, of-
etry around the inner gearworks. It
is only after 1700 that more of the ten tweaking them to make them
their own. This was especially true
story emerges. By 1800 Lackschil-
duhr (lacquered shield clock) de- in the British Isles. By the later 20th
century Eastern Europe, Latin
signs dominated with similarly flat,
ornately decorated faces, often in America, and Asian countries began
producing cuckoo clocks of their
porcelain, and still with exposed
gearworks to the rear. own.
Thanks to the large number of
The idea to enclose the gear-
works inside a case – often made of German Americans in the United
States as a ready-made market for
wood – began to emerge by the
1840s. The redesign emerged from cuckoo clocks, entrepreneurs were
eager to import or manufacture the
the Biedermeier period of design
that dominated the early decades of clocks. The most notable firm was
the American Cuckoo Clock Com-
the 1800s. Biedermeier reflected
growing middle-class sensibilities pany, established in the 1880s in
Philadelphia. Originally the compa-
of measured ornamentation and
modest lines. At the center of this ny imported German-manufactured
clocks. So many of them arrived
new design was Johann Baptist Be-
ha, whose company became a jug- with damaged cases that the compa-
ny decided to import the workings
gernaut in clock manufacture.
Already his father, Vinzenz, had from Germany but make the clock
cases here. The company prospered
played a major role in producing
until supply chain issues in World
shield clocks.
War II put them out of business.
Beha was instrumental in solidi-
After the war, smaller operations in
fying the Biedermeier clock design,
the United States, most notably the
with or without cuckoo mecha-
New England Cuckoo Clock Com-
nisms. Gearworks were now mount-
pany began manufacturing cuckoo
ed in a case resembling a picture
clocks, usually with German gear-
frame with ornate paintings sur-
works.
rounding the clock dial, those paint-

4 • THE GERMAN CITIZEN • March - April 2026