Nuremberg clock

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Sundial for Nuremberg (day) hours at the Lorenz Church in Nuremberg

The Nuremberg clock ( Nuremberg hour ), documented since 1374, is a counting of hours of equal length used in the imperial city of Nuremberg and some neighboring cities . The hours for daylight and night were counted separately on two scales each beginning with hour one.

application

The Nuremberg clock was an attempt to preserve something of the old tradition after the transition from temporal hours to the year-long equinox and the advent of mechanical clocks (strike clocks). In contrast to the Italian clock and the Babylonian clock , the traditional separation between light day and night was not given up. Of the 24 equinox hours that have day and night together, both were assigned an integral part of the hour. However, because both day and night lengths are hours-whole numbers only on a few days of the year, a special - from today's point of view, somewhat complicated - rule had to be applied for the distribution of the hours.

In Nuremberg the longest day and the longest night are almost exactly 16 hours, the shortest day and the shortest night are almost exactly eight hours. The 24 hours can be added to day and night in a total of 16 combinations. But there are only 16 days a year on which the time between sunrise and sunset (and vice versa) is an integral number of hours. The traditional counting - like that of the twelve temporal hours - from sunrise or sunset could no longer be used. The start of counting remained fixed for about one sixteenth of the year and was only changed by one hour on the following, one of the so-called 16 turning days . The turning days were set in such a way that the start of counting only deviated from sunrise or sunset by a maximum of about a quarter of an hour.

Nuremberg clock:
Counting the day and night hours as a whole number of hours of equal length, which can be changed over the year
Turning days in Nuremberg
Turning day (1st half year) * Day duration Night duration Turning day (2nd half of the year) *
↓ 8 hours 16 hours ←
January 7th November 16
9 hours 15 hours
January 28th October 26th
10 hours 14 hours
14th of February 8th October
11 hours 13 hours
3 March September 22
12 hours 12 hours
19th March 5th September
13 hours 11 hours
April 5th 20th of August
14 hours 10 hours
April 23 August 2nd
15 hours 9 hours
May 15 July 11th
16 hours 8 hours
→ ↑

* Note: The calendar dates are taken from the Julian calendar that was in effect during the entire period in which the Nuremberg clock was in use .

The vernal equinox was March 11th in the 15th century. The sun divided the full day into twelve hours of day and night. On March 19, sunrise and sunset had shifted by a quarter of an hour each, and the clocks were corrected. Now there were 13 hours of the day (noon was in the middle of the seventh hour) and 11 hours of night. The difference between sunrise and sunset was now a quarter of an hour each with opposite signs, but decreased again over the next few days. Then it got bigger again, whereupon the clocks were adjusted again by an hour on April 5th, etc.

In the period from May 15th to July 11th (between the summer solstice on June 12th), there were 16 hours of day and 8 hours of night. The day counted from 4 a.m. (according to today's counting) had noon at 8 a.m., the night counted from 8 p.m. (according to today's counting) had midnight at 4 a.m. From the turning day 11 July to the turning day 16 November the clocks were adjusted in the opposite direction, from the turning day 7 January back in the previous sense.

The deviation of the Nuremberg clock from the day or night length given by the sun was a maximum of half an hour. On the longest and shortest day (night), the deviation in Nuremberg is insignificant with actually 16.06 from 16 and with actually 7.94 from 8 hours. In the periods around the solstices, the tolerance of ± 1/2 hour for the day or night length was only half used: only with + 1/2 hour or only with - 1/2 hour.

From dawn, the clock struck "An hour gen day," and so on until the end of the day finishing off was rung. An hour later the clock struck "an hour into the night" and so on until the end of the morning, after which the counting of the next day began. The completion or rash was indicated by a specific bell.

Example: According to our hour counting, "one hour into the night" meant 9 p.m. at the summer solstice and 5 p.m. in winter.

Certain idioms were used for the turning point. In the first half of the year they said: if it strikes (the days are getting longer); in the second half of the year accordingly: When it tees off (the days are getting shorter).

The turning days on which the clock had to be set were recorded in the calendars. The neighboring city of Schwabach and the imperial cities of Regensburg , Windsheim and Rothenburg ob der Tauber , in which the Nuremberg clock was also in use, did not always have exactly the same turning days.

Big clock and small clock

The Nuremberg clock was also called the large clock in Nuremberg and the surrounding area . It should be noted that a large clock is usually understood to be a 24-hour counting throughout the day and night . In Nuremberg, however, day and night were counted separately. Only the two different numbers of hours added up to 24 hours. With the designation large clock one primarily made the difference to the small clock (or half clock ) common today . Such a clock had been around since 1436 on the Katharinenkirche (finally destroyed in the Second World War). It was used in parallel, for which there were various conversion tables.

Use of the Nuremberg clock

The daily routine in Nuremberg was based on the big clock , in particular all public business was carried out according to it. There were few exceptions. One of them was the ringing of the midday bell, which, because of its constant time change after the big clock, revealed the complicated nature of the Nuremberg time order.

The fact that more and more small clocks were still being built was primarily a concession to strangers who came to the city. When the Electoral Congress took place in Nuremberg in 1611 , three of them were newly acquired.

The Nuremberg clock was not widespread further than the cities “facing” Nuremberg . Their use ended in Nuremberg with the end of independence, that is, with the transition to Bavaria in 1811 . Then the more practical small clock, which strikes two times twelve hours, prevailed. In the other cities this had already happened in the 18th century.

Blow towers

The Great Nuremberg Clock [was] no technical marvel, ... Rather, it had something to do with the Nuremberg peculiarity of counting the day and night hours. The hours were not indicated by any tower clock, but rather struck by guards, who were called tower keepers, on four striking towers. For this purpose, the guards had a mechanical clock in their tower room, which could be a 2 x 12 hour clock (a “double half” clock) or just a 16 hour clock. The latter had to be zeroed again after each kill. The 2 x 12 hour clock only needed to be adjusted on turning days. But it too was occasionally judged with the help of the sun and a midday guide. Towerers can be traced back to 1388 on the southern tower of the Sebalduskirche and on the northern tower of the Lorenzkirche . In 1440, the White Tower and the Laufer Schlagturm , both of which were part of the penultimate city ​​wall, were used as hit towers.

The tower keeper of the Sebalduskirche suggested that the tower keeper of the Lorenzkirche had to look it up. The tower guards also had to have visual contact with each other, for this reason the two clock towers were facing each other.

The importance of the time stamp and the towers becomes clear on a general view of Nuremberg. On the depiction of the city from 1502 (the third oldest of the known depictions), the striking towers with the seal of the hammer-swinging tower keeper are highlighted.

literature

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Description of the sundial for Nuremberg hours
  2. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , p. 60
  3. ↑ a b c cf. Gerhard Dohrn-van-Rossum: The history of the hour , Hanser 1992, ISBN 3-446-16046-9 , p. 112
  4. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , p. 79: Newly determined turning days in 1488, valid until the transition to the Gregorian calendar 1700
  5. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , pp. 49 to 60
  6. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , p. 62
  7. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , p. 50
  8. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , p. 43
  9. ↑ See Hans Gaab: The Great Nuremberg Clock in Contributions to the History of Astronomy, Volume 8, German 2006, ISBN 3-8171-1771-X , p. 47

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See also