Time in Germany

The time zone in Germany is Central European Time (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, MEZ; UTC+01:00) and Central European Summer Time (Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit, MESZ; UTC+02:00). Daylight saving time is observed from the last Sunday in March (02:00 CET) to the last Sunday in October (03:00 CEST). The doubled hour during the switch back to standard time is named 2A (02:00 to 03:00 CEST) and 2B (02:00 to 03:00 CET).

IANA time zone database

The IANA time zone database contains two zones for Germany, "Europe/Berlin" and "Europe/Busingen", although in 1945, the Trizone did not follow Berlin's switch to midsummer time.

Germany has been politically divided into East Germany and West Germany even after the start of the unix epoch, which is the date from which on the tz database wants to record correct information. The database aims to include at least one zone for every ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, and because this list was first issued in 1997 and thus after the reunification of Germany in 1990, only the unified Germany is listed.[1]

The zone Europe/Busingen was created in the 2013a release of the tz database,[2] because since the Unix time epoch in 1970, Busingen has shared clocks with Zurich.[3] Busingen did not observe DST in 1980 like the rest of Germany, but did so in 1981 after Switzerland adopted DST.

Data for Germany directly from zone.tab of the IANA time zone database. Columns marked with * are the columns from zone.tab itself.

c.c.* Coordinates* TZ* Comments* UTC offset UTC DST offset
DE +5230+01322 Europe/Berlin Berlin time +01:00 +02:00
DE +4742+00841 Europe/Busingen Busingen +01:00 +02:00

History

Daylight saving time was first introduced during World War I by the German Empire in the years 1916 to 1918. After the end of the war and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in November 1918, daylight saving time ceased to be observed in peace time. It was then introduced and abolished several times. In 1996, daylight saving time was harmonized throughout the European Union by Directive 2000/84/EC, which moved the end of DST to the last Sunday in October.

In 1980 the exclave Büsingen did not use DST in order to keep to the same time as Switzerland.[4]

See also

References

  1. Lennox, Jonathan (2008-02-11). "Re: FW: FW: Corrections to historic German timezone information". gmane.comp.time.tz.
  2. Eggert, Paul (2013-03-02). "tzcode2013a and tzdata2013a available". tz-announce. External link in |publisher= (help)
  3. Olson, Arthur David (2012-03-03). "New zone for DE, split from Europe/Berlin". gmane.comp.time.tz.
  4. "Schweizer Zeit in Büsingen". Schweizer Fernsehen: SF Videoportal.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/11/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.