德国人发明了夏令时，现在却准备取消

夏令时烦人吗？数百万德国人说，没错。

这个以时间观念强而著称的国家正在推动欧洲议会“终结”夏时制（今年欧洲从3月31日开始采用夏令时）——也就是春季将时钟拨快一个小时，到了秋季再拨回来的做法。

上周二，欧洲议会投票决定从2021年开始取消夏令时。去年，在欧盟的一项调查中，84%的受访者表示他们支持全年采用同一时间。此项决议目前有待于各成员国政府批准。

有关夏令时的争论不仅限于欧洲。上月初，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普就在推特上表示他支持取消这项制度。

欧盟委员会主席让-克洛德·容克是此事的推动者。在去年9月上述调查结果出炉后，容克就表示一定会取消夏时制。容克称，此项调查证明民众的意愿是“必须停止调整时间”。

但实际上，这基本上只是德国人的意思。

该次调查涉及460万人，其中300万是德国人（德国约占欧盟总人口的六分之一）。

但德国人应当在“干掉”夏令时方面发挥主导作用，夏令时的德语是“sommerzeit”，意思就是“夏天的时间”。毕竟，是他们在1916年春天发明了这种做法。

战时历史

夏令时的“发明”经常引发争议。有人将其归功于本杰明·富兰克林，因为他曾经开玩笑地说这是对付爱睡觉的巴黎人的一项战略。还有人说夏令时的发明者是一位新西兰昆虫学家，因为他希望有更多的业余时间来收集昆虫。我们不都想要更多的业余时间吗？

但夏令时首次大规模实施是在第一次世界大战期间。当时德国政府下令将时钟向后拨一小时，目的是在傍晚多利用一小时日光，从而省下煤炭去打仗。和德国一样急需节省能源的同盟国和协约国都开始这样做，但战争结束后，这些国家很快就放弃了此项制度。

二战期间，阿道夫·希特勒重启了这样的做法，目的也是节省能源。二战结束后，东德和西德不同程度地施行了这项制度。1945年柏林被占领期间甚至一度将时钟拨快两个小时，以便和莫斯科时间保持一致。

夏令时的优与劣

从那时起，德国乃至全世界都在夏令时问题上反反复复，这项制度受宠往往是在危机或能源短缺期间，包括20世纪70年代的石油禁运。德国到2002年才在全国统一实行夏令时。

因此，这种做法自然会在节能方面引起争议，因为如今其效果并无说服力。有人指出，从春天开始省下来的那一小时能源或经济收益会在秋天时钟拨回后被抵消。但也有人支持夏令时，他们说这样做延长了冬季的白天时间，从而让黑暗的冬季夜晚变得更容易度过。

此外，反对者的理由还包括睡眠时间略有缩短引发的风险——有人说刚进入夏令时的那几天发生交通事故的可能性会上升，生产率和健康水平则会下降，而且人们会普遍烦躁不安。还有许多人说这么做很麻烦。

来自于德国基民盟的欧洲议员彼得·利泽主张取消夏令时，他在个人网站上发表声明称：“如果我们从未调整过时间，而现在有人想采用夏时制，那别人就会觉得他疯了。”

其他政坛人士也持这种态度——容克在去年9月呼吁取消夏令时后，德国议员克里斯蒂安·林德纳在推特上表示支持。

他写道：“夏时制很烦人。”

‘更胖、更笨、更暴躁’？

可以说，这个问题在德国一直存在争议。

去年秋天的夏令时论战中，德国《时代周报》引述慕尼黑大学时间生物学家（没错，他们研究的就是时间的生物性特征和生物钟）蒂尔·伦内伯格的警告称，取消夏令时可能给德国人带来灾难，因为这样会让他们无法在夜间得到适当的休息，原因是夜间休息源于人们对季节性光照变化的追踪。

《DST all year around》是篇好文章。这是在德国，但也还是这样。我已经和平常一样收到那些愤怒的邮件了。有人爱夏令时，也有人恨它，这跟事实无关。敌人和各个“派系”总有让我意想不到的地方。#Cloxit

— 蒂尔·伦内伯格（@TillRoen），2018年9月12日

伦内伯格说：“这会提高患糖尿病、抑郁以及出现睡眠和学习问题的可能性。也就是说，我们欧洲人会变得更胖、更笨、而且更暴躁。”

《时代周刊》发表了他的文章后，伦内伯格在推特上说他“像平常一样”收到了那些愤怒的邮件，他还给这篇推文添上了个性化标签：#cloxit。

节省时间？并非那么有效

在德国国家计量机构——联邦物理技术研究院（Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt），简称为PTB，这项制度不太可能成为很大的技术障碍。PTB负责发布德国所谓的“法定时间”，包括夏令时开始和结束那两天。

PTB授时负责人安德烈亚斯·鲍施博士表示：“我们的政府又问了同样的问题，取消夏时制不是可以让我们省去很多工作吗？这省不了什么，15分钟吧。”

就个人而言，相关收益就更不明显了。从女儿那里得知消息后，鲍施也参加了欧盟的那次调查。他说，自己宁愿原封不动地保留夏令时，因为取消它就意味着冬季的黑夜将失去一小时的光亮。

对于夏令时在德国普遍不受待见的问题，鲍施抛出了一条言简意赅的理论。

他说，对许多人而言，“抱怨就是生活极为重要的组成部分之一”。

与此同时，在英国，夏令时的德国“出身”基本没有引起关注，取而代之的是一个更明显的目标，那就是整个欧盟。

保守党议员约翰·弗拉克表示：“长期以来我们一直都知道欧盟想过度控制我们的生活。现在我们要自行掌握时间。”（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

Is Daylight Saving Time annoying? Millions of Germans say, ja.

The notoriously time-conscious nation is behind a new initiative from the European Parliament to end the practice of pushing clocks forward by one hour in the spring (which will occur this Sunday in Europe), and back by one hour in the fall.

On last Tuesday, the Parliament voted in favor of stopping the practice by 2021, following a poll last year from the EU in which 84% of the respondents voted in favor of reverting to one time year-round. The law must now be passed by national governments.

The debate isn’t just limited to Europe. Earlier last month, U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed ending the changing of the clocks in a tweet.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is a force behind the movement, having vowed to back the end of Daylight Saving Time in September last year, after the results of the poll were released. The survey proved it was the will of the people, he declared; “Clock-changing must stop.”

But in reality, it was mostly just the will of the Germans.

Out of 4.6 million responders to the poll, 3 million were German. (The country accounts for about one-sixth of the EU’s total population.)

But it is fitting that Germany should have a starring role in the death of Daylight Saving Time (DST), or as it’s known in Germany, sommerzeit (literally, ‘summer time’.) After all, it gave birth to the practice in the spring of 1916.

A wartime history

The “invention” of DST is often debated. Some attribute it to Benjamin Franklin, after he jokingly suggested it as a strategy for tackling Parisians’ love of sleeping in. Others say the creator was a entomologist from New Zealand who wanted more after-work hours for insect collecting. Don’t we all.

But DST was first widely practiced in the midst of World War I, when the German government ordered pushing the clock back by an hour to gain an extra hour of evening daylight and, in turn, save on coal that was used to keep the war running. The practice was adopted by both allies and adversaries of Germany that were just as desperate to save energy, but it was quickly dropped after the war’s end.

During World War II, Adolf Hitler reintroduced the practice, again to save energy. After the war, the practice was unevenly adopted across a divided Germany, with occupied Berlin even briefly jumping ahead by two hours in 1945, to track the time in Moscow.

DST’s pros and cons

Since then, Daylight Saving Time has gone in and out of style in Germany and the rest of the world, usually finding favor in times of crisis or energy shortages, including after the 1970s oil embargo. It was only adopted in its current, country-wide form in Germany in 2002.

The natural argument for Daylight Saving Time as a result been energy savings, but the benefits are now inconclusive, with some arguing the energy or economic gains of an extra hour in the spring are cancelled out by the removal of that hour in the fall. Some make the case that DST in the fall extends daylight in the winter, making dark winter evenings more bearable.

The arguments against, meanwhile, include the risks of a slightly sleep-deprived population: some claim the days after a time change bring a potential rise in car accidents, a decline in productivity and health, and just general crankiness. Also, many argue, it’s a hassle.

“If we didn’t have the time change, and today someone would come up with the idea of introducing it, everybody would think that person was crazy,” said Peter Liese, a Member of the European Parliament from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union who pushed for the abolishment of DST, in a statement on his website.

Other politicians shared the sentiment: after Juncker advocated eliminating the time change in September, German MP Christian Lindner tweeted his approval.

“It was annoying,” he wrote.

‘Fatter, stupider and grumpier’?

Even still, the issue hasn’t been without controversy in Germany.

In the fall, as the rule was being debated, Till Roenneberg, a University of Munich chronobiologist (yes, that’s someone who studies the biology of time and biological clocks), was quoted in the Zeit newspaper warning that the shift away from sommerzeit could be disastrous for Germans, preventing them from getting the proper night’s rest that comes from tracking seasonal shifts in light.

Good Article re ‘DST all year around’. It’s in German, but still. Already getting the usual hate mails. That DST (=Sommerzeit = summer time) is such a fact-free zone with love and hate, enemies and factions always surprises me. #Cloxit

— Till Roenneberg (@TillRoen) September 12, 2018

“It increases the likelihood of diabetes, depression, sleep and learning problems,” he said. “This means we Europeans will become fatter, stupider and grumpier.”

After the Zeit article was published, Roenneberg noted on Twitter that he was getting “the usual” hate mail, and added a custom hashtag: #cloxit.

A time saver? Not so much

At Germany’s national metrology institute, known as the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, or PTB, the law is unlikely to cause much technical hassle. The institute is responsible for distributing the country’s so-called “legal time”—including on the two days a year when the clocks change.

“We got the same questions from our ministry: Doesn’t [eliminating DST] save us a lot of work?” said Dr. Andreas Bausch, head of Dissemination of Time at the institute. “This saves nothing. Fifteen minutes.”

From a personal perspective, the gains are even less clear. Bausch himself responded to the EU’s poll, after his daughter told him about it. He would prefer to keep the system exactly as it is, he said, noting that the loss of DST would mean one less hour of sunlight during the dark winter evenings.

As for the unpopularity of sommerzeit in Germany, he proposed a concise theory.

For many people, he said, “complaining is an extremely important part of life.”

In the U.K., meanwhile, Daylight Saving Time’s German origins have largely gone unnoticed in favor of an even more obvious opponent: the EU as a whole.

“We’ve long been aware the EU wants too much control over our lives,” John Flack, a Conservative MP said in the Guardian after the vote was passed. “Now they want to control time itself.”