Industrial heritage in St. Georgen:
How Black Forest clockmaking became world industry
St. Georgen in the Black Forest is one of the region’s most important industrial and technological locations. The watchmaking industry, which flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries, gave rise to an extraordinary concentration of expertise in precision engineering.
The town is home to watch factories and the audio industry, featuring well-known names such as DUAL and Perpetuum-Ebner. The motor manufacturing sector includes companies like Papst and ebm-papst, and mechanical engineering remains a strong presence to this day. The Hotel FederWERK offers a unique opportunity to experience this industrial heritage—not as a museum, but as a place to arrive and linger.
The Black Forest without clichés
The Black Forest is not „just“ landscape. It has also produced industry – technology that has reached millions of people. In St. Georgen, craft businesses became factories, individual pieces became series products and precision became a regional hallmark.
This story can be summed up in five great narratives.
From craft to industry:
How cottage industry became world industry
In the beginning there were individual clockmakers on the farms around St. Georgen. Andreas Müller (1684–1745) is considered the first; in 1725, together with Jerg Weißer, he repaired the church tower clock of the Lorenzkirche – for 12 guilders plus food and drink. Clock traders carried Black Forest clocks out into the world: Philipp Haas took over the clock trade in Bavarian Franconia at the age of just 17 and founded his own clock trading company in 1831.
Workbenches became workshops, and workshops became factories. Philipp Haas & Söhne, Mathias Bäuerle (from 1863) and Tobias Baeuerle (from 1864) built up clock factories. In 1867 Philipp Haas & Söhne produced metal clock movements on the „American principle“; in 1873 the new Schwarzwaldbahn railway brought a steam engine into the factory. By 1895, 200 people worked in the factory and 100 at home. In 1904 the Mathias Bäuerle company made around 6,000 clocks a month.
Specialised suppliers grew up around the clock: in 1852 Andreas Maier founded a factory for clock dials, which became an internationally known maker of clock hands. The company chronicle puts it like this: „Our hands, please note, are our strength.“
Precision as Black Forest DNA
Recording time, producing parts and controlling processes: over many generations, the Black Forest mastered the art of precision. Clockmakers needed tools and machines to do it. And so mechanical engineering got under way.
In 1836 Johann Michael Heinemann began producing lathes and tools for clockmakers; his sons turned the Gebr. Heinemann company into a manufacturer of international standing. In 1856 the J. G. Weisser Söhne machine factory was founded. At first it served the clock industry; later it became famous for state-of-the-art lathes. Since its 160th anniversary in 2016 the company has been located on Johann-Georg-Weisser-Straße.
The path leads from the clock to the machine, on to the motor and finally to medical technology. Clamping systems from St. Georgen are so extraordinarily precise today that they can hold workpieces to within less than five thousandths of a millimetre in shape and concentricity.
A school of precision:
Talents from the Tobias Baeuerle clock factory
How closely the industrial history of St. Georgen is interwoven is shown by the building in which FederWERK stands today. People who later wrote chapters of their own learned and worked in the Tobias Baeuerle & Söhne clock factory:
- Otto Rapp began his clockmaking apprenticeship here in 1912. He later designed an anaesthesia monitoring clock for the Dräger works and the cab clock for the V 200 diesel locomotives of the Schwarzwaldbahn (room 121).
- Dieter Grässlin completed his clockmaking apprenticeship here, founded his own company in 1956 and in 1963 developed the world’s first time switch in a standard housing size (rooms 012 and 222).
- Christoph Jäckle worked as a design engineer in the building for more than four decades from 1921. Over eight years and more than 5,000 working hours he built an astronomical art clock that calculates the date of Easter every year (room 120).
The families were closely linked too: in 1868 Tobias Baeuerle married Anna Maria, daughter of the master locksmith Johann Michael Heinemann. In 1931 Hermann Papst married Mathilde Steidinger. In St. Georgen, workshop, family and factory often merged into one another.
Sound & emotion:
When technology became music
With the gramophone and the record player, technology became an emotional experience. The brothers Christian and Josef Steidinger came from a family of clockmakers in the Stockwald. In 1907 they began producing gramophone drives together.
In 1911 Josef founded his own company called Perpetuum, which later became Perpetuum-Ebner (PE for short). Christian, meanwhile, continued to run Gebrüder Steidinger, whose products carried the name DUAL from 1935.
In the decades after the war the phono industry became one of the town’s most important economic factors. The first DUAL record changer came onto the market in 1949, and the PE REX A was highly successful in the 1950s. By 1975 DUAL had over 3,500 employees in eleven different plants. After economic difficulties the company was taken over by Thomson Brandt in 1982 – but the technical know-how was not lost. In 1983 the former DUAL stamping shop became the company HMT Häseler Metall Technik.
Motion & energy
What drives the world
Motors, fans and drives from St. Georgen are used in industry, in medicine and in everyday life – they work quietly, reliably and efficiently. The central figure behind all of it is Hermann Papst: he came to the town in 1928, designed the DUAL motor and in 1932 obtained the core patent for the Papst motor.
His company grew into today’s ebm-papst St. Georgen, which specialises in developing energy-efficient fans and motors, including blowers for respiratory medicine.
Everyday technology from St. Georgen
Many everyday objects have their origins in St. Georgen. KUNDO – Kieninger & Obergfell – launched a digital clock controlled by a quartz battery in 1971.
In 1986 KUNDO was the first in the world to introduce a radio-controlled clock. In 1971 Staiger developed the first quartz battery movement large enough for wall clocks and alarm clocks. After 1945, MIGNON metal construction kits and model railways by Staiger found their way into children’s rooms, bringing technology into children’s play.
From 1948 SCHMIDT produced the refills used in ballpoint pens. These refills were later standardised under DIN 16554.
Future & learning
The line continues
The history of innovation in St. Georgen is far from over. In 2004 Martin Zimmermann initiated the Virtual Dimension Center. This centre was the first virtual reality cluster in the Black Forest. Since 2006 the Virtual Fires Congress has brought many experts from civil protection, fire safety and rescue services together in St. Georgen.
There, practice meets research, politics and local government. In 2015 the company imsimity was founded. It creates XR learning worlds for schools, universities and professional training. A glimpse of the future awaits visitors at FederWERK in room 416.
The Papst family
Inventor, entrepreneur, builder: how Hermann Papst shaped St. Georgen with around 1,000 technical concepts – and why his family stands behind FederWERK today.
