Daylight saving begins in Germany

It is that time of year again, with Germany and Europe about to enter daylight saving time again. On the last Sunday in March, the clocks in Germany are set forward from 2:00 to 3:00am. The subject of time also plays a fundamental role in culture and the arts.

In the 17th century, so-called Vanitas (Latin for "nothingness") motifs in art were allegories for the transience of life. French painter Philippe de Champaigne's "Vanitas, Allegory of Transience with Skull and Hourglass" combined beauty and decay in the form of the fading tulip, skull and hourglass.

Transience and the passing of time continued to preoccupy artists: "La persistencia de la memoria" (The Persistence of Memory) is one of Salvador Dalí's most famous works. The small 1931 oil painting shows four melting pocket watches in a Catalan landscape. One of the watches is being eaten at by ants — a symbol of transience. A fly hovers on another, a symbol for the passing of time.

"Let's go ... we can't ... why not? ... we're waiting for Godot." This dialogue peppers the most famous play by Irish Nobel Prize laureate Samuel Beckett. The two tramps Estragon and Vladimir spend their time doing "nothing," waiting for someone by the name of Godot, whom they don't even know exists.

One of the few films in which the narrated time (the time frame of the plot) corresponds to the narrative time (the film length) is Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 "Cocktail for a Corpse." Based on a play, this film about a murder and the following party preserves the unity of time and place and gives the impression of being shot in a single take.

Film directors can play with time, shortening or skipping events and telling entire storylines in brief flashbacks. One of the best-known examples of this technique is Orson Welles' 1941 classic "Citizen Kane," which presents the life of newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane in cinematic flashbacks.

In his 1998 thriller "Run Lola Run," German director Tom Tykwer tells a story in three episodes, and fundamentally alters the perspection of the plot through small changes in time. The film experiments with time by stopping, compressing or slowing and stretching scenes as the director plays with rhythm to shift the viewers' perception of events.

German writer Michael Ende's 1973 classic children's book "Momo" is subtitled: "The strange story of the time thieves and of the child who returned the stolen time to the people." Certain "gray gentlemen" from the "Time Savings Bank" steal people's time. People no longer have time, they forget how to live in the present — until young Momo takes on the time thieves