In the eyes of tourists, the cuckoo clock is a well-known symbol of Switzerland, but the origins of this chirping/timing bird are to be found in Germany, and not Switzerland at all. Indeed, its origin dates back to 1730, and Franz Anton Ketterer, a clockmaker from Schönwald in Germany’s Black Forest region. Ketterer imagined and designed a clock equipped with two small organ pipes that imitated the song of the cuckoo. Then, a few years later, also in Germany, Michael Dilger, a watchmaker from Neukirch, had another idea. He endowed his clock with an automaton bird to accompany the cuckoo song. The cuckoo appeared from a door, on both the hour and the half-hour, and then disappeared back from where it had come from once it had announced the time.
In 1850, a century later, Friedrich Eisenlohr, then in charge of construction for Germany’s Baden-Württemberg Railway Company, responded to a call for tenders to renew the aesthetics of the Black Forest clock factory. He created a design inspired by his daily life, a clock that would reproduce the architecture of the railway stations that he knew so well. With this new aesthetic, he won the competition and his style was to go on to become the look for a new generation of cuckoo clocks.
The technical side of cuckoo clocks, with their relatively rudimentary mechanisms, would evolve only slightly over the decades. A decorative object par excellence, its beauty came from its elaborate wooden decoration which was carved by hand and often took inspiration from hunting scenes or certain fables.
All this begs the question, how did the cuckoo clock get associated with the Swiss? The explanation can be found in the origins of tourism during the 18th and 19th centuries. The first tourist shops opened up in Switzerland and offered various souvenirs to the country’s visitors. Among these, cuckoo clocks from the Black Forest were imported to sell to tourists. They were particularly popular and quickly became a best-seller that was taken home as a souvenir from Switzerland. From then on, the association between cuckoo clocks and Switzerland was made and spread around the globe thanks to the country’s tourists. The myth, still present today, was thus born.
Nowadays, a small production of cuckoo clocks exists in Switzerland, but it is not very visible. Nevertheless, we remember the Swatch Uhrly GC116 from the Gruëzi All Collection from 2016, which is nothing less than a watch in the shape of a cuckoo clock to wear on the wrist!
