Posted 3 years ago
skfrazier
(2 items)
Hi,
I'm hoping the clock experts can weigh in with any thoughts about this clock. My grandparents got it in Germany, but I don't recall when. There is a plaque at the bottom in German, and this is what it translates to:
"mistress administrative director k stein on the 25th anniversary of the board of directors of the general local health insurance fund
koln-mulheim on january 1, 1925"
Koln-Mulheim is a train station in Cologne, Germany. I am wondering if this was possible in the train station at one time?
Hi again, skfrazier. :-)
Beautiful clock. You're allowed up to four pictures per post, so perhaps you could add three more, including a close up of the engraved plaque.
Hopefully CW user Bruce99 will see this post, and have some advice.
Keramikos, thank you! I added more photos.
skfrazier, Thanks for the extra photos. :-)
I particularly wanted to get a better look at the plaque, because I was curious whether it had been inscribed in German script. It turns out that it isn't; it's in a relatively plain modern font, although some of the letters do have umlauts over them.
In case you don't know what those are, they're those two little dots over certain characters. It changes the pronunciation.
If you don't have a keyboard that can easily write umlauts, the letters can be written with an "e" character after the character that is supposed to have an umlaut. Therefore, an umlauted "a" becomes "ae," an umlauted "o" becomes "oe," and an umlauted "u" becomes "ue."
Thus:
HERRN VERWALTUNGSDIREKTOR K. STEIN
ZUM 25 JAERIGEN DIENSTJUMILAEUM
DER VORSTAND
DER ALLGEMEINEN ORTSKRANKENKASSE
KOELN-MUELHEIM, DEN 1 JANUARY 1925
Your translation was essentially correct, except that "HERRN" doesn't mean mistress, but rather mister. It's those pesky grammatical cases:
https://www.rocketlanguages.com/forum/german-grammar/difference-between-herr-and-herrn-in-german
Koeln-Muelheim is a district of Koeln (AKA Cologne):
https://the-red-relocators.com/relocation-guides-germany/real-estate-germany/cologne-district-profiles/cologne-muelheim/
In case you were wondering about that "Schäl Sick" insult:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%25C3%25A4l_Sick&prev=search&pto=aue
It's a bit curious that there is no maker name on the face of the clock. You might have to look at the actual clockworks for clues.
I'm still hoping that Bruce99 will weigh in with some of his expertise.
Do you know how I look at the clockworks without disturbing anything?
skfrazier, I don't, unfortunately. :-)
That would be the province of somebody with actual expertise.
You could try using one of those telescoping dental mirrors and a flashlight to investigate a bit.