Law on the introduction of a uniform time setting
| Basic data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Law on the introduction of a uniform time setting |
| Type: | Imperial Law |
| Scope: | German Empire |
| Legal matter: | Administrative law |
| Issued on: | March 12, 1893 ( RGBl. 1893, 93 ) |
| Entry into force on: | April 1, 1893 |
| Expiry: | July 26, 1978 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 1110 ) |
| Please note the note on the applicable legal version. | |
With the law on the introduction of a uniform time determination of March 12, 1893 ( RGBl. P. 93), the mean solar time of the fifteenth degree of longitude east of Greenwich (also called Central European Time CET) is legal for the German Reich from April 1, 1893 Time has been set.
history
Before the law was introduced
Railway times in the German Empire
Before the standardization of time determination, the respective local time applied in each place , which was based on the local position of the sun. For the timetables of the railway traffic extending over larger areas, the railway companies used the local time of a place in their area as the uniform railway time .
The railways in Prussia , Mecklenburg , Oldenburg , Saxony and Alsace-Lorraine used the Berlin time in their official operations . This "internal service" time only applied to the employees of the railway and to their clocks and timetables; the so-called “external service” of the railway was based on the local times, i.e. on the station clocks and the clocks on the tracks that indicated the local times. Which meant for the railway employee to constantly have to work with two times / clocks.
For the railways in Baden , Bavaria , Württemberg , Hesse and the Palatinate , the local time of their main locations Karlsruhe , Munich , Stuttgart , Frankfurt and Ludwigshafen applied .
The time differences could be at z. B. 6 min. or a quarter of an hour. Between Bavaria and Württemberg it was 23 minutes.
If you wanted to go around Lake Constance once, you had to change your watch five times. Starting from the Grand Duchy of Baden clockwise: Kingdom of Württemberg , Kingdom of Bavaria , Austria-Hungary , Switzerland and again in Baden.
The railways in the Reich had been in favor of greater standardization as early as the 1870s.
Time in industry, factories or workshops
In so-called “work regulations” it was recorded which time was binding for the employee at the job. Often it was the factory clock there. The pocket watch , which became affordable at the end of the 19th century, was a constant companion of a worker, also to check the accuracy of the factory clock.
Demand from the military
Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke , in a speech in the Reichstag in 1891, called for the unification of the times, which should ensure easier mobilization and troop movement of the Reichswehr, which he saw endangered in the five different times in the Reich.
Nationwide time regulations outside of the German Reich
In other European countries the i. d. Usually the local time of the capital as nationwide uniform time, so that the railway companies do not need their own railway time.
England and Scotland had the time determined by the longitude of Greenwich since 1847, which is still used today as Greenwich Mean Time .
France , Belgium , the Netherlands , Denmark and Norway used the local time of their respective capital, Sweden a time different from Stockholm by 12 minutes .
Only in Austria-Hungary , Russia and Italy were there several standard times : two in Austria-Hungary ( Prague and Budapest times), which was linked to the CET as early as the early 1890s and thus standardized, in the European part of Russia ( Petersburger and Moscow time), three in Italy ( Rome time for mainland, Palermo time for Sicily and Cagliari time for Sardinia ).
In addition, global developments, such as the definition of the prime meridian at the International Meridian Conference of 1884, led to the need for a uniform time in the empire.
From railway time to zone time
After the railroad era, the duty schedules, with the help of which z. B. the travel times, connection times, times of train crossings u. Ä. Could be determined, set up. Because bourgeois life - especially in the German Reich - along the railway lines was for a long time based on the local times of the stops, the arrival and departure times of the trains had to be converted accordingly and made known locally and in the course books. The clocks visible to the passengers showed the local time, while the clocks in the service rooms indicated not only the local time but also the railway time on which the service timetable was based.
Even if in the course of time several German railway companies had assumed a common railway time for internal service, different time calculations still existed side by side. This resulted in constant errors, misunderstandings and inconveniences, especially at the transition stations between railway areas with different railway times, which urgently needed remedial action. In this context, coordination problems in the event of mobilization were also discussed: "... in the event of mobilization, all trip lists sent to the troops must be calculated in local times and in the standard times applicable in southern Germany."
The German Reich extended over 17 degrees of longitude, and its local times differed by 67 minutes. This small extent made it possible to later integrate it into a single time zone . In addition, it was roughly in the middle of the 15th degree of longitude averaging the time zone with CET, so that the deviation of CET from local time on the western and eastern edges was only about ± ½ hour.
In North America , the area of the railroad companies extended over a much greater difference in longitude than in the European states, sometimes over the entire continent. Since a single railway time became too impractical for a company, the companies there introduced shared railway time zones as early as 1883. As was customary later, these differed by hourly steps, which corresponds to a difference in length of 15 °, and were based on the Greenwich meridian . Immediately after their establishment, these railroad time zones became official time zones in North America and were later supplemented by other time zones spanning the world. The prerequisite for this was the international agreement that took place at the Washington Meridian Conference in 1884 for the Greenwich Meridian as the international prime meridian .
On June 1, 1891, the German railway companies introduced the time of the 15th degree of longitude for official traffic and for duty schedules under the name Central European Railway Time (M. E.Z.) .
In 1892 the time of the 15th longitude was introduced in individual states of the German Empire ( Kingdom of Bavaria , Grand Duchy of Baden , Kingdom of Württemberg ) and finally established by law on April 1, 1893 for the entire German Empire .
The 15th meridian of eastern longitude, on which the time zone of Central European Time is based, crosses the city of Görlitz . Such was Görlitz time an earlier term for the subsequent Central European Time CET.
After the introduction of the law
The law remained in effect in the successor states of the FRG and GDR of the German Reich. In the FRG it was converted into the law on the determination of time in 1978 and repealed in 2008, its content being incorporated into the law on units in metrology and time determination .
Summertime
See: Summertime # Germany
Daylight saving time was first introduced during the First World War in 1916-1918. In the Weimar Republic, standard time was used. During the Second World War it was reintroduced from 1940 - even remained the standard time between 1940 and 1942. In the post-war years up to 1949, the victorious powers determined when the time was changed in their zones of occupation. Based on the Moscow time, the so-called midsummer time applied in the Soviet occupation zone and Berlin, for example, from the end of May 1945 to September 1945 - with a time difference of two hours to Central European time. After 1949 the conversion was then suspended. Since 1980, based on the 1973 oil crisis , summer time has been reintroduced - it was introduced simultaneously in the FRG and the GDR , politically coordinated.
See also
- Time zone
- List of Meridian Monuments - Meridian Monument on the 15th degree of longitude in Görlitz
literature
- Clark Blaise: The Taming of Time. S. Fischer, 2001, ISBN 3-10-007109-3 .
- Ingo von Münch : The right time. In: New legal weekly . Vol. 2000, issue 1, pp. 1-7.
- Railroad time . In: Freiherr v. Röll , Section Head in the Austrian Ministry of Railways: Encyclopedia of the Railway System. Second, completely revised edition 1912–1923. 1912 to 1924 in the second edition. Urban & Schwarzenberg Verlag, Berlin / Vienna.
- Railroad time . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 1888, Volume 5, p. 5.467
Web links
Individual evidence
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↑ Law on the introduction of a uniform time specification in the original
Law on the introduction of a uniform time specification in transcription - ↑ a b c d e f g h Carsten Schroeder: Zeitchaos im Kaiserreich: Interview with Dr. Caroline Rothauge [AUDIO]. In: Deutschlandfunk. Deutschlandfunk, October 24, 2019, accessed on October 24, 2019 .
- ↑ Manfred Deger: When the clocks went differently in Bavaria. Retrieved October 24, 2019 .
- ↑ Speech by Dr. Count Moltke in the Reichstag on March 16, 1891 on the agenda item "Reichseisenbahnamt". Retrieved January 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Clark Blaise: The Taming of Time. S. Fischer, 2001, ISBN 3-10-007109-3 , p. 135.
- ↑ Uniform railway time . In: The Gazebo . Issue 35, 1891, pp. 596 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
- ↑ The clocks and their times. Public observatory "Adolph Diesterweg" Radebeul , archived from the original on 23 August 2016 ; accessed on April 1, 2018 .
- ↑ Art. 1 and 3 of the law amending the law on units in metrology and the calibration law, repealing the time law, amending the units ordinance and amending the summer time ordinance of 3 July 2008 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 1185 )
- ↑ Summer times and midsummer times in Germany up to 1979. May 11, 2017, accessed on October 24, 2019 .
- ↑ a b FOCUS Online: For two years there was no normal time in the German Empire. Retrieved October 24, 2019 .
- ↑ NDR: How long has summer time existed? Retrieved October 24, 2019 .
