Furtwangen Clockmaking School (Großherzoglich Badische Uhrmacherschule)

In 1850 the government of the Grand Duchy of Baden set out to help the impoverished upper Black Forest, where many farmers and craftsmen made clocks through the long winters. Commissioned from Karlsruhe, the young engineer Robert Gerwig founded the Grand-Ducal Baden Clockmaking School at Furtwangen, the first such school in Germany, to give its pupils better training and their clocks a better market.

Gerwig also organised a competition in 1850 for new clock case designs. The architect Friedrich Eisenlohr submitted a case based on his designs for the lineside houses of the Baden state railway; this 'Bahnhäusle' clock became the model for the Black Forest cuckoo clock as it has been made ever since. Within two years Gerwig had begun a teaching collection of clocks gathered from across the region, which grew into the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, today Germany's largest clock collection and part of Furtwangen University, itself a successor of the school.

Pupils and teachers made regulators, clocks, watches and instruments in the school's workshops, many of which are now in the museum. From the late 19th century the school added electrical engineering and precision mechanics to its teaching.

Objects made at the school are usually catalogued under its full name, Großherzoglich Badische Uhrmacherschule, and many are now in the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum at Furtwangen, which grew from its teaching collection.