![]() ![]() In 1784, following the advent of the pendulum clock and other more accurate timekeeping devices, the polymath Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea of moving waking hours to align better with daylight hours. In a satirical letter to The Journal of Paris, he suggested people should wake up earlier in summer to save money on candles and lamp oil, after observing city-dwellers sleeping late into the morning and missing out on daytime hours. The concept of setting the clock forward and back to reflect the fluctuations of the seasons and daylight has a long history, stretching all the way to the Romans, who used water to measure time, adjusting their scales throughout the year according to solar movements. The origins of Daylight Saving Time (DST) Summertime ends and wintertime begins (or normal time resumes), at 3am on Sunday, October 29, 2023. In 2023, summer time in Germany begins at 2am on Sunday, March 26. Daylight Saving Time begins in Germany at 2am on the last Sunday in March, forcing people to move their clocks forward an hour as Central European Summer Time begins.ĭaylight savings ends on the last Sunday in October, when the clocks are set back one hour and Central European Time resumes. In Germany and elsewhere across the world, the implementation of Daylight Saving Time ( Zeitumstellung) sees the time change twice per year. Time change in Germany 2023 ( Zeitumstellung 2023 Deutschland) Daylight savings is designed to help people make better use of the sunlight hours during summer and winter. Germany has been changing the time twice a year since at least the end of the 1970s. It was not until 1893 that the German Empire finally joined Central European Time. In 1884 the Washington Meridian Conference saw 25 countries agree on a universal world time, but Germany did not take part, objecting to the fact that the prime meridian ran through London in England, and not through Berlin. When the German Empire came together in 1871, it didn't immediately lead to the standardisation of time in Germany. This meant that short journeys across the country could take a passenger through as many as six different time zones. ![]() Prior to this, when the country existed only as a patchwork of independent cities, duchies and kingdoms, each area kept its own time, dictated by when the sun was at its highest, when the local church bells rang, and the timings kept by the five different railway systems across the country. Germany has only had uniform time measurements for around 120 years. A brief history of time in GermanyĪll German federal states fall under the same unified time zone: Central European Time (CET) - also known as UTC+1.00. If you've ever wondered why we change the clocks twice a year - and if we'll carry on doing so forevermore - here's a brief explainer. It's been a practice on and off in Germany and other countries around the world for over 100 years, but to some expats it comes as a bit of a surprise: every year at the end of March and October, people set their clocks forward and back one hour, to implement what's known as Daylight Saving Time.
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