Most of the clock companies that existed in the Black Forest in the 19th century no longer exist. Anyone who looks into the region comes across dozens of names that appear in chronicles and nowhere else. That Anton Schneider is one of those names and is still producing has less to do with luck than with a series of decisions that kept pointing in the same direction.
1848: a workshop in Schonach
Anton Schneider founded his workshop in Schonach, in the middle of the central Black Forest, less than twenty kilometres from Furtwangen, where two years later the competition was announced that produced the railway house design. How that shape came about is described in our article on the history of the cuckoo clock.
What was made back then is what is still made today: cases from local wood, a mechanical movement, a call from two wooden pipes. The difference lies in the machines, not in the principle.
From a sideline to a business
In the middle of the 19th century, clockmaking in the Black Forest was cottage industry. One farm built movements, the next built cases, a third did the painting. Anyone who wanted to sell a clock had to bring the work of many hands together.
In principle less has changed about this than you might think. A cuckoo clock is still the result of several trades that have to mesh, and the manufactory is the place where the parts become a clock.
The clock peddlers
Selling was done through clock peddlers, traders with a carrying frame full of clocks who walked across Europe, as far as Scandinavia, Russia and Turkey. They were on the road for months and brought back not only money but also requests for particular designs.
The fact that Black Forest clocks exist with motifs aimed at very different markets goes back to that period. From the very beginning, export mattered more to the clock trade than the domestic market, and nothing about that has changed.
The 20th century
Two developments hit the industry in its substance. From the 1970s onwards, quartz technology made mechanical clocks redundant as pure timekeepers. Anyone who only wanted the time no longer needed a pendulum. And from the 1980s onwards, cuckoo clock shaped products from the Far East came onto the market that had nothing to do with Black Forest construction.
In response, the Verein die Schwarzwalduhr was founded, which has since issued a certificate of authenticity for mechanical clocks demonstrably made in the Black Forest. The number of businesses that still master this kind of production has become small since then.
The move to Gütenbach
Since January 2026 we have been producing in Gütenbach, around fifteen kilometres from Schonach, in the same valley where clocks have been built since the 19th century. Machines, moulds, tools and the people who know how a clock goes together all came along.
We share the site with Hanhart 1882, a manufactory for mechanical chronographs. Both houses face the same task: making an old German clock brand well known again and carrying it forward for the long term. That works better under one roof than separately.
What has stayed
The material: solid lime wood for cases and decorative parts. The drive: falling weights on chains, a pendulum as the timekeeper. The call: two wooden pipes with bellows, no recording, no loudspeaker. And the division of labour in the workshop, which has essentially been the same for 150 years.
What has also stayed is the obligation that follows from it: clocks that came from our house are accepted for repair, even when they are decades old. What that costs and how it works is set out in Having a cuckoo clock repaired.
What has changed
The machines that are worked with, and the way a clock finds its way to the customer. The peddler with his carrying frame is a parcel service today, and the catalogue is an online shop.
And for some years now we have been building electronic clocks alongside the mechanical ones. They are not a replacement but an answer to a different question: anyone who wants the sound and the look of a cuckoo clock without a daily routine still gets a clock from Gütenbach, assembled, painted and tested by hand.
Why this matters to a buyer
A cuckoo clock is a purchase for decades. The decisive point when buying is therefore not the motif and not the price, but the question of whether the manufactory will still be there in twenty years, when the clock needs care. We have been in the Black Forest since 1848 and we answer that question anew every day, by getting back clocks that are older than their owners.
There is more on how we work on our craft page, and more on the company history under history. Our current models can be found in the overview of all cuckoo clocks.