Stunden

Stunde, plural Stunden, is a unit of time in German that equals 60 minutes. It is used to express both durations and specific moments in time, as in eine Stunde or zwei Stunden, and in phrases such as Es ist eine Stunde später. In everyday language and in technical contexts, the hour is the standard subdivision of the day in the German-speaking world.

The word Stunde is of Germanic origin; its exact etymology is not always certain. The concept of dividing the day into hours has ancient roots and, with the spread of mechanical clocks in Europe during the late Middle Ages, the length of an hour became fixed at 60 minutes in modern timekeeping. Before standardized clocks, hour lengths could vary with the season when using variable or daylight-based measures.

In contemporary usage, Stunden occur in a wide range of settings. They form the basis of time expressions such as Stundenschatz or Stundenlohn (hourly wage) and Stundensatz (hourly rate). They appear in scheduling terms like Stundenplan and in discussions of Arbeitszeit or working hours. The term Stunde also appears in historical or cultural phrases, for example Stunde Null, which refers to the immediate postwar period in Germany after World War II.

Overall, Stunde is a fundamental and widely used unit in German, anchoring both everyday time-telling and more formal concepts of pricing, planning, and work time.