How do you read the Berlin clock?

Add up the lit lamps from the top down. Row 1 lamps are 5 hours, row 2 lamps 1 hour, row 3 lamps 5 minutes and row 4 lamps 1 minute. The round lamp on top only blinks and does not count.

Where is the Berlin clock?

At Budapester Straße 45, on the Budapester Straße side of the Europa-Center in City West. It is about six minutes on foot from S+U Zoologischer Garten, U Kurfürstendamm or U Wittenbergplatz.

What does Mengenlehreuhr mean?

Set theory clock. The name comes from the Mengenlehre taught in West German schools in the 1970s. The display is really a base-five number system.

Does the Berlin clock cost anything to see?

No. It stands on the street, so you can see it for free at any time. It is easiest to read after dark, when the lamps stand out.

Is the Berlin clock still working?

The latest local report I found, from June 2025, says it is still running and looked after by the Europa-Center. It was rebuilt in 2007, and only the side facing Budapester Straße is lit.

Why is it not on the Kurfürstendamm any more?

The clock stood at the corner of Uhlandstraße from 1975 to 1995. After its inventor Dieter Binninger died in 1991, neither the city nor the district wanted to pay to run it. Business people at the Europa-Center moved it there in 1996.

Is the Berlin clock worth a special trip?

I would not cross the city just for it. It takes two minutes, so make it a stop between Bahnhof Zoo and KaDeWe or on a walk along the Ku'damm.

The Berlin Clock: How to Read the Lamp Clock by the Europa-Center

Yusuf Ucuz

Nov 1

5 min read

Updated: Nov 3

You walk along Budapester Straße from Bahnhof Zoo towards the Europa-Center, and there is an odd thing on a pole by the wall. A round yellow lamp blinks at the top. Under it sit four rows of red and yellow boxes. It has no numbers and no hands, and most people walk straight past it.

That is the Berlin clock, the Berlin-Uhr, also called the Mengenlehreuhr. It has told the time in this city since 1975, and you can learn to read it in about a minute. I think that minute is worth it, because the clock also carries one of the best small stories in West Berlin.

How to read the Berlin clock

Read it from the top down and add up what is lit. That is the whole method.

Top lamp: it blinks every two seconds. It only shows that the clock is running, so leave it out of the sum.
Row 1, four red lamps: each lit lamp is 5 hours.
Row 2, four red lamps: each lit lamp is 1 hour.
Row 3, eleven narrow lamps: each lit lamp is 5 minutes.
Row 4, four yellow lamps: each lit lamp is 1 minute.

So take two lamps in row 1, four in row 2, seven in row 3 and two in row 4. That is 10 + 4 hours and 35 + 2 minutes, or 14:37. The clock runs on the 24-hour day, so an afternoon reads above 12.

The Berlin clock on Budapester Straße by day, with two red lamps lit in the top row, none in the second, six in the third and one in the bottom row

Two lamps, none, six, one. That makes 10:31.

One detail saves you most of the counting. In row 3, every third lamp is red. Those red lamps mark 15, 30 and 45 minutes, so you can find the quarter at a glance and count on from there. When the clock was new, Berlin papers had to print instructions, and this tip was in them.

Practise on a working Berlin clock

I built a small working model so you can get this right before you are standing in front of the real one. It starts on the time in Berlin now. Drag through the day or tap a lamp to watch the sum change, then switch to reading it with the answer hidden. You can also keep it open on its own page as the Berlin Clock Reader.

Most wrong answers come from the same three slips:

Counting row 1 as single hours. Two lit lamps there mean 10, so start the sum with fives.
Counting row 3 as single minutes. Those narrow lamps are fives too. Six of them is half past.
Looking for am and pm. There are none. Four lamps in row 1 means evening.

The Berlin clock seen from below against the glass front of the Europa-Center, with three lamps lit in the first row, three in the second, one in the third and two in the fourth

Try this one yourself: three, three, one, two. It reads 18:07.

Why the Berlin clock is called a set theory clock

Mengenlehre is German for set theory. In the 1970s West German primary schools taught it as part of the New Math wave, and many parents hated it. The taz remembers the mood well: children who were learning set theory at school still could not tell their parents the time from this clock.

The clock has very little to do with set theory. The plate on its mast still calls it the first clock in the world to work on that principle, but the display is a base-five number system, the way you might keep score with tally marks. So the nickname tells you more about the year than about the maths.

The man who had to change the bulbs

The clock's inventor was Dieter Binninger, a trained watchmaker and engineer. In June 1975 his clock went up on the central strip of the Kurfürstendamm at Uhlandstraße, about seven metres tall on its mast. Most accounts say 17 June, while the metal plate on the mast says the 18th. It went into the Guinness Book of Records as the first clock to show the time with lit coloured fields.

Who actually wanted it depends on who tells the story. The Europa-Center's own history says the Berlin Senate commissioned it. The Morgenpost says Binninger gave the oversized prototype to the district of Charlottenburg as an advert, because he hoped to sell wristwatches with the same display. Those watches never appeared, but table and wall models did sell in Berlin souvenir shops.

The Berlin clock at night on the Kurfürstendamm in July 1975, glowing small in the distance beyond trees, street lamps and lit shop fronts

The Ku'damm on 5 July 1975, less than three weeks after the clock went up. It is the small glow on the right.

Berliners were not impressed at first. "Dit soll 'ne Uhr sein?" (That's supposed to be a clock?), the Morgenpost recalled people grumbling. Then the bigger problem arrived. Traffic on the Ku'damm shook the clock so hard that its 108 light bulbs failed early, and Binninger had agreed to look after them himself. Each time, he had to hire a lifting platform.

The Berlin clock on its tall mast in May 1979 above parked cars on the Kurfürstendamm, with the broken tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church behind it

The clock's first home, May 1979. Three, two, ten, four: 17:54, with the Memorial Church behind it.

So he set out to build a better bulb, one he claimed would last 150,000 hours. By 1991, the taz reports, he had signed to buy the bulb line of the East Berlin maker Narva. A week later, on 5 March 1991, he died in a plane crash near Helmstedt.

After that, nobody wanted the bill. Neither the city nor the district would keep paying about 8,000 marks a year, and in 1995 the clock was switched off and put into storage. A column of lamps that the city would not pay for and could not quite throw away is the reason I made a print of the Berlin-Uhr.

Berlin-Uhr art print: the 1975 Berlin clock on its column, a yellow seconds lamp on top and four rows of red and yellow lamps below

The yellow seconds lamp and four rows of hours and minutes. My Berlin-Uhr print, printed to order.

Business people at the Europa-Center took it in, and it has stood at its new spot since May 1996. The plate calls it a permanent loan from Binninger's widow, while the taz says she sold it to the city, so even the ownership has two versions. It was rebuilt in 2007, so the clock you see today has been renewed since Binninger's day.

Where to find the Berlin clock today

The Berlin clock at night, its lamps glowing orange and yellow against a dark street, with four lamps lit in the first row, two in the second, all eleven in the third and two in the fourth

The same clock after dark, reading 22:57. The lamps are much easier to see at night.

The clock is easy to miss, because it stands on the back of the Europa-Center and away from the shop crowds on Tauentzienstraße.

Address: Budapester Straße 45, on the Budapester Straße side of the Europa-Center.
Getting there: about six minutes on foot from S+U Zoologischer Garten, U Kurfürstendamm or U Wittenbergplatz.
Cost and hours: it stands on the street, so you can see it at any time for free.
Which side to stand on: the face towards Budapester Straße. On the Ku'damm both sides worked, but only this one is lit now.
Best time: after dark, when the lamps stand out from the wall.

I would not cross the city for it. It takes two minutes, so make it a stop on a walk you are already doing: Bahnhof Zoo to KaDeWe, or a stroll along the Kurfürstendamm. The old spot at Uhlandstraße is about a kilometre further west, though nothing of the clock is left there.

While you are at the Europa-Center, go inside for its second odd timepiece, the 13-metre water clock in the main hall. If clocks start to appeal, the East has its own famous one in the World Clock on Alexanderplatz, where my walk Berlin Then and Now begins. People arranged to meet under that one for decades.

Next time you pass the Europa-Center, stop and read the lamps before you check your phone. If you get it right the first time, you have already beaten a lot of 1975 Berlin.

Image credits

Source and licence details for the 4 photographs used in this article.

The Berlin clock at the Europa-Center: Fred Romero, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Berlin clock from below: Schelbypicture, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Berlin clock on the Kurfürstendamm, May 1979: Willy Pragher, Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Berlin clock at night: Morn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.