Herr der Zeit

Amongst the Western peoples, it was the Germans who discovered the mechanical clock, the dread symbol of the flow of time, and the chimes of countless clock towers that echo day and night over West Europe are perhaps the most wonderful expression of which a historical world-feeling is capable.

[...] It was about 1000 a.d. and therefore contemporaneously with the beginning of the Romanesque style and the Crusades – the first symptoms of a new Soul – that Abbot Gerbert (Pope Sylvester ii), the friend of the Emperor Otto iii, invented the mechanism of the chiming wheel-clock. In Germany too, the first tower-clocks made their appearance, about 1200, and the pocket watch somewhat later. Observe the significant association of time measurement with the edifices of religion. †

† Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Originally published in Munich, Germany, C.H.Beck, 1918. First American Edition edition published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1926. Translation by Charles Francis Atkinson.