Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué

Jean -Baptiste Schwilgué ( born December 18, 1776 in Strasbourg, † December 5, 1856 ) was a French watchmaker and restorer and partial Neubauer of the movement of the astronomical clock in Strasbourg Cathedral.

With the construction of the clock Prugner was in the years 1547-1548 under the leadership of Jean Chrétien Herlin, astronomer and maths professor of later Strasbourg Academy and its mathematically talented employees, the physician Michel Herr and the theologian Nicolas begun. After an interruption took in the years of 1571 and 1574 Herlin students Dasypodius Konrad ( 1531-1601 ) and the Breslau David Wolkenstein ( 1534-1592 ) work together with the brothers Isaac Habrecht ( 1544-1620 ) and Josiah Habrecht ( 1552-1575 ), watchmakers from Schaffhausen, and the Strasbourg-based Schaffhausen painter Tobias tuner (1539-1584) on again.

Schwilgué was fascinated as a boy by the stationary clock in 1788 and acquired the knowledge and skills that were necessary for the construction of a new watch movement, in the course of his life in autodidactic studies at. At the age he was entrusted with the repair, which he undertook in the years 1838-1843 ( the clock was completed on 24 July 1843, however, already inaugurated on 31 December 1842). His desire to build a whole new clock with a glass casing to allow the viewer to admire the movement, was not accepted for reasons of cost.

There are still many Schwilguésche tower clocks, most of which, however, rather unspectacular. In Strasbourg itself several still remain, for example, on the time-honored Aureliakirche (1845 ). As Schwilgués most beautiful clock tower can those at the Freiburg Münster (1851 ) are considered.