I am using a datetimepicker from Eonasdan which works fine so far.

I have a HTML element like this

<div id=datetimepicker></div>

and use the datetimepicker function like this:

$(#datetimepicker).datetimepicker({

    inline: true,

    sideBySide: true,

    stepping: 5,

    locale: de

});

The result looks like this:

I want to update the date via Javascript using the date function. My try looks like this:

$(#datetimepicker).data(DateTimePicker).date(2016-01-01);

Unfortunately this only returns a large object and does not alter the visible date in any way. This object is returned

Object { destroy: c/l.destroy(), toggle: c/ha(), show: c/ga(), hide: c/ba(),

    disable: c/l.disable(), enable: c/l.enable(), ignoreReadonly: c/l.ignoreReadonly(),

    options: c/l.options(), date: c/l.date(), format: c/l.format(), 40 weitere… }

Using a different time format or taking only date and no time or whatsoever does not help either.

None of the suggested solutions I found on various websites have solved my problem. I don't know whether I have to update the element? If so, how do I do it? I could not find any hint in the docs...

It is not an option to use the defaultDate since I need to do this process twice with two different dates.