It was said of Leopold Andreas Alfred Friedrich-Hans Siegfried, half-brother to the sovereign duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, that he had two phobias for each of his names. Specifically, he lived in mortal fear of spiders, falling, mirrors, bells, chains, the color yellow, birds, clocks, crossing streets, being touched, people in costume, and being poisoned. A childhood visit to the town of Furtwangen im Schwarzwald proved paralyzing for his grace, who was unprepared to confront so many of his terrors collected together in the form of that city’s most famous export, the cuckoo clock.

Leopold’s phobias dogged him into adulthood, and grew over time. By the age of thirty, he had developed aversions to mushrooms, triangles, buttonhooks, blushing, brass hinges, engravings, andirons, square knots, and the numbers eleven and seventeen. On his fortieth birthday, presumably at the urging of his family, he submitted himself to the care of a renowned Viennese specialist, whose therapeutic approach was to slowly alter the environments of his subjects, gently titrating ever-greater concentrations of the offending elements, until the phobias dissipated. These eight model clocks were created for his grace’s summertime residence in Schloss Franconia, and mark a period in his treatment in which he had resolved his feelings toward clock dials and the number eleven, but had not yet bested his fear of birds, bells, or chained pendulums. By all accounts, the treatment was going swiftly and successfully, but Leopold died before it could be completed. An uncorroborated but popular story holds that it was these very clocks that prompted his sudden heart attack, Leopold having latterly developed morbid fears of pinecones, finials, oak leaves, and the letters I, V, and X.

Published January 7, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Jonathan Hoefler.