The Killer Cuckoo Clocks of Stefan Strumbel

What's that hanging so threateningly on the wall there? Why, of course: it's just a Killer Cuckoo Clock!

Most of the people who use Online Clock probably don’t know this, but we’re actually located in Berlin, Germany.

My name’s Tom, and I’m the creator of the original online alarm clock website, and I’m an American guy who moved to Berlin from San Francisco, California about ten years or so ago.

Berlin is a great city. It’s big, it’s pretty cheap (at least by American standards) and it has a lot happening culturally. It’s a city still the process of inventing itself and creating itself…so there’s always something new here. And Germany’s also not a bad place to live, though of course there’s no place like home.

I was doing some research for a blog post about Cuckoo Clocks and I discovered these really great modern Cuckoo Clocks from an artist who apparently goes by the name of Deine Heimat, which means “your country” or “your homeland” translated from the German.

Here we see a Killer Cuckoo Clock with some beautiful blue background lighting.

So obviously, these clocks are made by a German artist.

Doing a little more research, I discovered that this seems to be the handle used by an artist named Stefan Strumbel.

Whatever the case, the unusual and thoroughly modern Killer Cuckoo Clocks of Mr. Strumbel speak for themselves.

Normal Cuckoo Clocks make me chuckle because I actually no of no Germans who purchase or use these clocks in their homes. Instead, Cuckoo Clocks here in Germany seem to be a sort of cottage industry aimed at American tourists. I’m sorry if I’m spilling some German state secrets here, but this really does seem to be the case. Just about every German national that I’ve come to know in this country thinks that traditional Cuckoo Clocks are pretty hideous, even the older generation!

Or, maybe you prefer a Killer Cuckoo Clock for your home in luxurious white with orange day-glo accents?

So, when you take a look at the Killer Cuckoo Clocks of Deine Heimat, a.k.a. Stefan Strumbel, you’ll see images of:

Skulls
Machine Guns
Wings
Bones
Hand Grenades
Hearts
Dead Deer
Wild Game
Blood

There’s likely a lot of irony intended in the name “Deine Heimat”, because, as I mentioned, I really don’t know any Germany who actually use Cuckoo Clocks at all. I think that Mr. Stumbel is perhaps playing around with the typical stereotypes floating around about Germans here, or perhaps simply making fun of them.

Whatever the case, the clocks are just cool, and kind of throw the typical stereotypes of what German culture is all about on its head, forcing us (and Germans, certainly) to reevaluate them.

You can find out more about the Killer Cuckoo Clocks from Deine Heimat at the Galerie Springmann in Freiburg, Germany.

The artist himself also has a blog online (“Deine Heimat”) on Blogspot here.

For the record, Stefan Strumbel also creates a lot of other great art that has nothing at all to do with Cuckoo Clocks.

But we’re an Alarm Clock Blog, so the clocks are obviously what we’ve chosen to write about.