Pocket watch

A **golden pocket watch** has been an heirloom in the Tannhaus family for generations. Once stolen from the family in 1888, it found its way back to a Tannhaus by 1971, where it seems to stay for the rest of its history.

## History

### 1822 (Adam's world)

While riding in a carriage with his son Gustav, Heinrich Tannhaus wears the watch and a triquetra ring, holds the Sic Mundus cane later to be used by his son, and reads from the *Ariadne* play. He tells his son that that was his mother's favorite play. Heinrich pulls out the pocket watch, opens it, and looks at the inscription that says "For Charlotte".

### 1888

#### September 23

Gustav Tannhaus inherited the pocket watch from his father and still holds it in his old age. On his way into town to draft a telegraph to inform the world of the existence of time travelers, his carriage is stopped. Following a commotion from inside, an unknown man enters the carriage with him. The blind man can only listen as the stranger quotes Freud (citing a work that hasn't even been produced yet) before he is strangled to death. The stranger takes the pocket watch.

### 2019 (Eva's world)

#### November 5

The Unknown returns from Adam's world with the three artifacts he was sent to retrieve, including the golden pocket watch. He gives them to his mother Eva. Eventually, the middle-aged Eva takes the pocket watch.

### 1888 (Adam's world)

#### September 26

The middle-aged Martha Nielsen from Eva's world travels to the Tannhaus Machine Factory on Adam's world and leaves the pocket watch and a letter for the middle-aged Jonas Kahnwald, who will be stuck in that time period until 1921.

### 2019

#### November 6

Noah likely obtains the pocket watch from Adam in 1921. He gives it to Elisabeth in the forest and tells her that it used to belong to her mother (while true chronologically, the watch has not made its way to Charlotte yet).

### 2020

#### June 27

Elisabeth is looking at the pocket watch in the bunker just before the young Noah arrives before the apocalypse. After the disappearance of her mother that same day, Elisabeth will hold onto the pocket watch for decades to come.

### 2021

Shortly after working on clearing out the tunnel with Noah, Elisabeth looks at the pocket watch with him in the cave**.** The time on the watch is 2:29.

### 2041

Mother and daughter (and daughter and mother) Charlotte and Elisabeth Doppler arrive in 2041 from 2053, having been sent by Adam to maintain everything in the loop before he enacts his final plan. Charlotte takes the pocket watch with her as she and Elisabeth leave with the newborn Charlotte.

### 1971

#### November 8

Adult Charlotte and Elisabeth travel to 1971 from 2041. They leave baby Charlotte and the pocket watch at H.G. Tannhaus's doorstep on the night that his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter perish in a car accident.

### 1987

#### June 23

H.G. Tannhaus works on the pocket watch when a middle-aged Claudia Tiedemann comes to see him for the first time (for her—he once met her older self in 1954, just hours before her death).

#### September 25

Tannhaus reveals to his adoptive granddaughter Charlotte the truth about his family and where she came from. He tells her that when she showed up on his doorstep, all she had with her was the pocket watch.

## Analysis

The middle-aged Noah likely learned about the pocket watch while he was with Elisabeth in the post-apocalyptic Winden. However, presumably Elisabeth never fully explained its origin. Thus Noah always assumed the watch belonged to her mother. This might explains why Noah gave it to Elisabeth in Season 1, even though he was not yet aware that Charlotte was the baby he had with Elisabeth, which he discovers in Season 2.  However, it remains unclear how Noah managed to obtain the watch.

The beginning of the watch's history seems to be around the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it once belonged to Charlotte Tannhaus, the wife of Heinrich. After Charlotte's death, Heinrich kept the watch, before passing it on to his son. After briefly passing out of its home world to Eva's world, and then back, it ended up in Jonas's hands in 1888, after which its path is not clear. It is possible that, like other artifacts that fell into his possession during this period of his life (alternate Martha's letter, the portable time machine that takes them from 2020 to 1888, the portable time machine that Hannah brings with her to 1911...), Jonas held onto the pocket watch until time required it be used. In 1920, then, when Noah returns to Adam after twenty-one years in the post-apocalypse, Adam possibly gives Noah the watch, alongside the Bible and his instructions to find the missing pages of the triquetra notebook. It is around this point, then, that Noah begins traveling actively, goes to 2019 (ninety-nine years in the future, just three hops using the portable time machine), and gives Elisabeth the pocket watch. Elisabeth will then hold onto the watch until 2041, when it is taken and brought to H.G. Tannhaus in 1971 by a future Charlotte and Elisabeth. Seemingly at this point, the watch remains in Tannhaus's possession—perhaps he tries to pass it on to his granddaughter, but this version of the watch is never seen again beyond September 25, 1987 ("Life and Death"). Perhaps it remained lost among Tannhaus's many belongings in his shop, which his family later begin to clear out by 2020 ("Beginnings and Endings").

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 *Dark* Season 3 Episode 3: "Adam and Eva"
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *Dark* Season 3 Episode 6: "Light and Shadow"
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 *Dark* Season 1 Episode 4: "Double Lives"
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 *Dark* Season 2 Episode 8: "Endings and Beginnings"
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 *Dark* Season 3 Episode 7: "Between the Time" Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name ":3" defined multiple times with different content
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 *Dark* Season 3 Episode 5: "Life and Death"
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 *Dark* Season 2 Episode 3: "Ghosts"