Anyone who has ever taken the train somewhere from Munich Central Station or arrived there from somewhere has most likely taken a quick look at it: the large four-armed clock that has hung from the ceiling in the middle of the reception hall since the 1970s, clearly visible from all sides. As part of the station renovation, it was dismantled and transported away last week. It is now being cleaned, preserved and maintained – and will then be permanently on display in the German Museum’s transport center.
Visible from all sides: the clock in the former reception hall.
(Photo: German Museum)
There it flies: the station clock is being transported away.
(Photo: German Museum)
“Deutsche Bahn has offered it to us to take over. Of course we won’t say no,” explained Frank Zwintzscher, research assistant at the transport center. Unlike the listed facade clock, the time indicator from the reception hall in the new main station is no longer used. But in the exhibition on the subject of travel in the transport center, the clock is intended to serve as an object for the audience to demonstrate “how closely our current time division is linked to the railway,” says Zwintzscher: “For example, today’s Central European Time once came from the unified ‘railroad time’ out.” Those were the days!