Breisach, Germany Is Cuckoo

We jumped on the Viking Longboat, Lofn, in Basel and set sail down the

Saint Stephan's Cathedral, Breisach

Rhine River. As expected, the water was smooth and the scenery was lovely. And also, as has been with our cruises for the last few years, the weather went from wonderful to stinkin’ inside of 20 minutes. Since we couldn’t change the weather, we chose to have a great time, anyway. This year, for a change, I remembered to pack a warm scarf and some gloves; it was one of my better ideas. Our first stop was Breisach, Germany for some Black Forest cake and a look at how they build cuckoo clocks.





Breisach sits on a basaltic rock outcrop on the Rhine plain. It’s in one of the warmest parts of Germany that makes it great for growing wine.

The Black Forest

Breisach means breakwater in Celtic; the first part of the name, Breis means ‘to break’ in French, so draw your own conclusions about how the languages originated. The hill on which the town sits was, when the river was in flood, in the middle of the Rhine; but through man’s intervention it now sits on the bank. Although the Romans kept a supplementary castle there, the hill had once been the seat of a Celtic prince. Due to its strategic position, Breisach was popular with all of the groups passing through the area, so a settlement was well established by the time Staufer actually founded the city. Several religious groups claimed the location, but by the early 13^th century there was a cathedral and by the 16th century Breisach was a bastion of the Holy Roman Empire. However, in 1638 Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar captured, subsequently giving it to France. The area acquisition was batted about from France, back to the Holy Roman Empire, to Spain, to the Holy Roman Empire (again!), to Austria, and finally to Baden, Germany in 1805. All around this town is what we really came to see: the Black Forest.

Originally the forest was called Abnoba Mons by the Celts and Silva

Black Forest Cake, Outside and Inside

Marciana by the early Germans. It was used as a place to live, and as somewhere to hide from whomever was warring. At one time the deciduous and fir trees were so thick that it was literally black once you moved into the forest. Farther up the mountains, the deciduous trees gave way to thick stands of spruce. Then along came humans bent on using wood for all sorts of things and the forest was devastated, then replanted with spruce. This of course leads to all sorts of environmental issues, not the least of which is disease; if all you have is spruce and disease kills spruce trees, there is nothing to recover. In the 1990s three hurricanes, Vivian, Wiebke, and Lothar raked the area, downing thousands of spruce trees. The upside of this is that in the areas left to come back on their own, a healthy mixed forest is beginning to grow. The day we visited the area, the forest seemed primeval. It was rainy, cold, and there was a fog hanging over the mountains. What we wondered was how this mountain range inspired a dessert. And it actually didn’t. The dessert, the Black Forest Cake, is named for a specialty liquor made from tart cherries that grow here: Schwarzwälder Kirsch(wasser). We watched a chef prepare one of these confections and had a sample. While it was good, it’s not on my top ten desserts.

The other item the Black Forest is famous for is cuckoo clocks. The first Black Forest clocks were created between 1740 and 1750, but for years

Top L to R: Clock varieties, Farm scene, Traditional
carved clock
Bottom L to R: Large clock, Clock dancers, Motor-
cycle scene

they could not be attributed to any one person since there were several home-industries in the area making these wooden-geared apparatuses. There are, however, two stories of how the clocks came into being. The first story comes from Father Franz Steyrer, in his 1796 ‘History of the Art of Clockmaking in the Black Forest’ (Geschichte der Schwarzwälder Uhrmacherkunst). Two clock peddlers met a Bohemian who sold cuckoo clocks; they were so enamored of the clocks that they bought one, took it home and copied it. Once they showed it to other clockmakers in the area, it was copied again, and again, starting the cuckoo clock making industry. However, researchers have found that there was no Bohemian clock-making industry during this period. The second story originates with Johannes Wildi in his 1780 publication, Exemplary (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2008-024). Another priest, Markus Fidelis Jäck, reports that in 1730 the cuckoo clock was invented by Franz Anton Ketterer. Using the idea of a sound produced by a bellows, he crafted a moving bird that would call Cuckoo on the hour. And although this story is more popular, Ketterer wasn’t born until 1734 so it is as unlikely as the first story. Researchers persist, and in 1995, one person found that the earliest cuckoo clocks have been verified to come from what is now the Czech Republic, making the first story more likely. In any case, these clocks have persisted, becoming more elaborate and complicated throughout the years. Some have animals and people that move, while others are carved in Neoclassical, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, or Art Nouveau styles. Some have elaborate sound schemes for announcing the quarter and half hours; but they all have a bird that pops out each hour tootling its distinctive, ‘Cuckoo’!

Glass blower at work

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