How East Germany Forced West Germany into the Same Time Zone in 1980 — A Story That Is Newly Relevant

On the day Berliners adjust their clocks for winter, the Berliner Zeitung revisited the strangest chapter in German time-change history: the year Berlin nearly ran on two different times simultaneously. In 1979, West Germany debated adopting daylight saving time, but East Germany had not done so. Had the West gone alone, the S-Bahn, regional railways, and phone lines linking the two halves of Berlin and the two German states would have faced a logistical nightmare — trains would arrive at times their passengers couldn't agree on. The crisis was averted only because the DDR made a surprise announcement that it, too, would adopt summer time, effective April 6, 1980, with both German states switching on the same day. The piece also debunks five persistent myths about the time change: Benjamin Franklin did not invent it (his 1784 letter was satire); it was not designed for farmers; energy savings remain scientifically unproven; 'winter time' has no official legal designation; and despite the European Parliament's 2019 vote to end the biannual change, the EU has still not implemented an abolition because member states cannot agree on a single permanent time.