I’ve never been to Bavaria, but my image of it is that of the Alps, beer, the Black Forest, and cuckoo clocks.
Old cartoons from Popeye, Bugs Bunny and Mickey and Donald, always had gags about the cuckoo clock. Even the Three Stooges had standard slapstick routines involving the cuckoo clock.
Growing up, it was a source of hilarity to see a cuckoo clock. There’s a small clock, weight driven or with a pendulum, hanging down and tells the hour with a small bird zipping out a birdhouse door, and cuckooing the time. Quaint, inventive and frivolous, but it is a great conversation piece. Accurately tells the time too.
The cuckoo clock was a hallmark of German ingenuity and craftsmanship. It was and still is a nation’s trademark. Small, exact, and well-engineered, typically German, its image ranks up the list of precision and artisanship.
Cuckoo clocks were first invented around the 1700s in the Black Forest region of Germany. It’s mechanism consisted of a pipes or bellows for the cuckoo sound, a wooden arm which extends the bird, as well as automation for the bird to move once it’s out of the birdhouse clock. The typical design of the clock case is that of a Black Forest house.
Through the centuries the case has evolved to various designs. Other designs were less German and more current. Variants have included the Bahnhäusle (from the Baden Clockmakers School of Furtwangen) with ivy ornaments round the face work; railroad station case designs; the “Chalet” style from Switzerland complete with a Swiss music box playing “Edelweiss”; and others which incorporate contemporary designs.
The popularity of the Swiss Chalet design may explain why the cuckoo clock is mistakenly thought of as a Swiss invention. A person could not be faulted for that as cuckoo clocks are usually associated with alpine wear, including knickerbockers and alpenhosens with a feathered hat.
Nowadays, there are quartz cuckoo clocks, and the sound is from a recording of a cuckoo call from the wild. Of course, these modern reproductions are battery powered and more accurate, but somehow these latter day reproductions have lost something from the mechanical cuckoo clocks. To say the least, the quartz models are more mechanical.
