Cuckoo clocks: Black Forest history, types and care

The cuckoo clock is older than the Black Forest tradition: an Augsburg merchant described one in 1629. Small workshops in Germany's Black Forest were making wooden cuckoo clocks by the mid-1700s, and the classic carved house shape grew from an 1850 design competition at the clockmaking school in Furtwangen, where architect Friedrich Eisenlohr proposed a clock shaped like a railway signalman's house. The call comes from two small pipes, each with its own bellows. Mechanical cuckoo clocks are wound by pulling chains: daily for 1-day clocks, weekly for 8-day clocks.

Key facts

Black Forest cuckoo clock history

Before the Black Forest. Nobody knows who invented the cuckoo clock. The earliest known description comes from the Augsburg patrician Philipp Hainhofer, who in 1629 wrote about a clock with a cuckoo belonging to Elector August of Saxony. In 1650 the scholar Athanasius Kircher described a mechanical cuckoo whose call was made by two bellows-driven pipes tuned a third apart, the same principle used today.

Black Forest workshops. Clockmaking in the Black Forest began with simple wooden clocks, probably in the second half of the 17th century, as winter work for farming families. By the mid-1700s, small workshops between Neustadt and St. Georgen were making wooden cuckoo clocks, though they stayed a niche product for about a century. The region became a clockmaking powerhouse: a historian at the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum (German Clock Museum) in Furtwangen has said that in the first half of the 19th century, one in every three clocks in the world came from the Black Forest.

The Ketterer story. A popular account, from Markus Fidelis Jäck in 1810, credits Franz Anton Ketterer of Schönwald with inventing the Black Forest cuckoo clock in the 1730s. Historians doubt it: the Wikipedia article on the cuckoo clock notes that Ketterer was born in 1734, and other accounts name different makers. It is best treated as a legend.

The railway house. In September 1850, Robert Gerwig, director of the Grand Ducal Baden Clockmaking School in Furtwangen, invited designs for a modern clock. The most influential entry came from the architect Friedrich Eisenlohr, who designed buildings for the Baden state railway. According to the German Clock Museum, Eisenlohr took the model of a railway signalman's house and decorated its front with a dial. A clock built to his design dates from about 1853/54. This Bahnhäusle ("little railway house") became the prototype of the Black Forest cuckoo clock. From around 1860 the cases became much more ornate, with carved leaves and animals, and in 1862 Johann Baptist Beha of Eisenbach offered clocks with carved bone hands and pine-cone weights. Within a few years, other forms of cuckoo clock had largely disappeared from the market.

To see the history in person, the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Furtwangen displays more than 1,000 clocks. For the wider story of clocks, see the invention of the mechanical clock.

How a cuckoo clock works

A traditional cuckoo clock is a weight-driven pendulum clock with an extra train for the cuckoo (and sometimes a third for music). Its weights are usually cast iron, shaped like pine cones, on chains. When the hour or half hour comes, the movement lifts an arm that opens the little door and pushes the bird out, while working two small bellows. Each bellows blows into a small wooden pipe (a stopped, or gedackt, pipe) tuned to a different note, giving the two-note "cuck-oo". The cuckoo calls the number of hours, and once at the half hour. Quartz cuckoo clocks use a battery and an electromagnet to move the bird, and play a recorded call.

Types of cuckoo clock

The VdS "Black Forest" certificate

The Verein die Schwarzwalduhr (VdS, the Black Forest Clock Association), founded in 1987 and based in Schonach, is an association of makers, suppliers, dealers and collectors that protects the geographic origin of the Black Forest clock and the registered collective trademark "Black Forest Cuckoo Clock". Its rules say a certified clock must be made in the Black Forest, have a mechanical movement and usually a wooden case and carvings; parts for the cuckoo call, moving figures, dials, hands, weights and gongs must be made in the region where that is technically possible and economically reasonable, and parts no longer made there may come from elsewhere. A VdS certificate tells you where a clock was made; it is not a quality ranking.

Setting up a cuckoo clock

1. Remove all packing. Cuckoo clocks ship with wire clips on the bellows, paper on the gong wire and foam in the movement. ISDD, a maker in Schönwald, lists leftover packing as a leading reason a new clock won't call.
2. Hang it straight on a screw or nail in the wall, high enough for the weights and chains to hang freely; ISDD suggests about seven feet, in a spot free from drafts.
3. Hang the weights and pendulum, then start the pendulum and listen for an even tick-tock.
4. Set the time by moving only the minute hand. Never move the hour hand on its own unless correcting the strike.

Care and winding

• Winding: pull down the free end of each chain (the ring end) to raise the weights. Don't lift the weights by hand while pulling.
• Night silence: most mechanical cuckoo clocks have a manual switch to stop the call; some more expensive models silence automatically, and quartz models use a light sensor.
• Dust and drafts: keep the clock away from kitchens, fireplaces and open windows. Drafts can stop the pendulum.
• Moving it: take off the pendulum and weights, secure the chains and the bird's door, and pack the bellows and gong wire as they arrived.
• Servicing: like any mechanical clock, a cuckoo movement eventually needs cleaning and oiling by a repairer. See clock repair.

Common problems and cuckoo clock repair

For anything beyond these checks, find a clockmaker who works on Black Forest movements. AWCI's CC21 clockmaker certification specifically covers cuckoo clocks, and its directory can be searched by ZIP code; see finding a good repairer.

Sources

• Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Furtwangen (German Clock Museum): the railway-house clock (PDF)
• Wikipedia: Cuckoo clock
• Schwarzwald Tourismus: the cuckoo clock (in German)
• Verein die Schwarzwalduhr (VdS, Black Forest Clock Association): the association
• ISDD (Schönwald, Black Forest): cuckoo clock FAQ
• AWCI (American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute): Find a Professional and certifications

Last updated November 6, 2026. Found an error? Tell us.

More about clocks

• Types of clocks
• Clock repair
• Clock troubleshooting
• The mechanical clock
• All clock guides
• Grandfather clocks
• Winding a mantel clock
• Parts of a clock
• History of timekeeping