Going Cuckoo Over Cuckoo Clocks in the Black Forest of Germany

Imagine pondering waterwheel or flower garden, wood cutter or marching band, tumbling kids or animals frolicking in a meadow... after weighing the comparative beauty of a vast display of cuckoo clocks, you choose the perfect specimen for your wall. Then, upon eagerly unwrapping and installing it, and waiting for the minute hand to reach twelve, you hear the little birdie say "Beep! Beep!" roadrunner style. "Beep, beep?" That Warner Brothers pest is a member of the cuckoo family? He sure is. But, no, we never encountered a roadrunner cuckoo clock in the Black Forest of Germany. And we didn't find clocks crowing "Cock-a-doodle-doo," either, despite the fact that rooster clocks were the presumptive forbears of the cuckoo clock. What we did find was hundreds of styles of clocks with intricate, hand-carved accents, chirping exclusively "Cuckoo" on the hour.

The Black Forest is a heavily forested area bordering the Rhine in southwestern Germany, close to the borders of both France and Switzerland. While the name Black Forest invokes fears of some long-ago criminal rampage, it actually derives from the appearance of the land with the canopies of massive numbers of trees blocking the sunlight. Pines and firs dominate the landscape. Naturally, with the ready availability of wood, a community of woodcarvers evolved there. Clock-making began in 1630 in Germany's Black Forest region. In about 1738 Franz Ketterer, probably influenced by Czech craftsmen who made intricate wood carved clocks with roosters crowing the hour, created the first cuckoo clock. The change from rooster to cuckoo was most likely motivated by the facility of creating a cuckoo sound, an easier sound to reproduce than the trill of the rooster. These charming clocks with cuckoos peeking out of doors to announce the hour instantly became popular and remain a mainstay of the Black Forest's economy today.