YOU ARE HERE: IN UNTER DEN LINDEN AT NOON
“It was noon sharp and all the pretty people in Berlin are taking their usual walk. Spruced-up crowds are dawdling up and down the Linden. And this is the spot where, to their amazement, all men come to a sudden halt, put one hand in their pocket and look up.
The reason for this, dear friend, is that they are standing right in front of the Academy clock, which is the most exact of all Berlin clocks. No passer-by fails to set their own watch according to this one. It’s a jolly view if you do not know that there is a clock up there.”1
Measuring time might be easy today – after all, over half of all our appliances are fitted with a clock – but until the late 1800s it was far from straightforward. That’s why each day, servants were dispatched to Berlin’s main boulevard to adjust the master’s and mistresses’ home clocks to match the reading of the city’s main chronometre…