Goethe Oak (or Goethes Oak), is a name given to a number of oak trees in Germany that are referred to in this way because they allegedly bear some sort of connection to the poet

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

History

Perhaps the most famous one is the oak tree near

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg an ...

, Germany, on the Ettersberg, at the foot of which was the castle of Charlotte von Stein. The oak, in the middle of a beech forest, is named thus because it is supposedly the tree under which Goethe wrote "

Wanderer's Nightsong "Wanderer's Nightsong" (original German title: "") is the title of two poems by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Written in 1776 ("") and in 1780 (""), they are among Goethe's most famous works. Both were first edited together in his 1 ...

", or, alternatively, the location where he composed the

Walpurgisnacht Walpurgis Night (), an abbreviation of Saint Walpurgis Night (from the German ), also known as Saint Walpurga's Eve (alternatively spelled Saint Walburga's Eve), is the eve of the Christian feast day of Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century abbess i ...

passages of his ''

Faust Faust is the protagonist of a classic German folklore, German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540). The wiktionary:erudite, erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a ...

''. The fate of the oak became in due course associated with the fate of Germany: if the one were to fall, so would the other. According to the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, the name 'Goethe Oak' was simply an epithet made up by the inmates of Buchenwald camp in commemoration of the walks Goethe was known to have made in the area. The large, old tree had previously been labeled the ''Dicke Eiche'' (English:"thick oak") on maps of the area.

The end of the Buchenwald oak

The beech forest was cleared in 1937 to make way for the

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or s ...

. Originally the camp was to be called ''KL Ettersberg'' ("KL" for ''Konzentrationslager''), but this was abandoned because the Ettersberg name was so closely connected to the life of Goethe. The tree stood in the center of the camp, and is reputed to have served also for the hanging and torture of prisoners. The tree was hit by an Allied incendiary bomb on 24 August 1944 and burned all night long. It is preserved (being cast in concrete under the auspices of the DDR government, which also laid a plaque saying "Goethe Eiche") and is part of the Buchenwald memorial. For the SS guards and the prisoners, the tree held two completely different meanings: for the SS it was a link to the Germany they thought they represented, but for the prisoners the tree pointed to a different Germany from the one they experienced in the camp. According to

Amos Oz Amos Oz ( he, עמוס עוז; born Amos Klausner; 4 May 1939 – 28 December 2018) was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onwa ...

, the incorporation of the oak in the camp and its subsequent destruction are evidence that the Nazis destroyed their own heritage,. In ''Der Totenwald'', camp survivor

Ernst Wiechert Ernst Wiechert (18 May 1887 – 24 August 1950) was a German teacher, poet and writer. Biography Wiechert was born in the village of Kleinort, East Prussia, (now Piersławek, Poland). He was one of the most widely read novelists in Germany ...

recalls standing under the oak and reflecting on the two Germanies it represented — what later scholars would call the "''Januskopf Deutschlands''", the Weimar-Buchenwald dichotomy. The tree gave its name to another book by a survivor,

Pierre Julitte Pierre Julitte (1910–1991) was a French engineer, writer, and member of the resistance during World War II. A prisoner at Buchenwald concentration camp, he recollected his camp experiences in a book titled for the camp's so-called Goethe Oak, ' ...

's ''L'Arbre de Goethe'' (1965). The oak was sketched by

Léon Delarbre Léon Delarbre (1889–1974) was a painter, museum curator, and World War II resistance fighter. After a career as a museum conservator and teacher in his hometown of Belfort, he joined the French resistance in 1941. Arrested in 1944, he was h ...

, who used to sit under its "charred limbs" and compose poetry.

Other Goethe oaks

Another Goethe oak is in

Krásný Dvůr Castle Krásný Dvůr Castle (german: Schönhof) is a Baroque chateau in Krásný Dvůr, North Bohemia, Czech Republic. It has a English-style landscape park and a garden inspired by that of Versailles. History The first records of Krasný Dvůr d ...

in Bohemia (today in the Czech Republic), estimated to be 1000 years old. The

Arnsberg Forest Nature Park The Arnsberg Forest Nature Park (german: Naturpark Arnsberger Wald) is a nature park in the districts of Hochsauerlandkreis and Soest within the administrictive region of Arnsberg in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The park was est ...

Sauerland The Sauerland () is a rural, hilly area spreading across most of the south-eastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia, in parts heavily forested and, apart from the major valleys, sparsely inhabited. The Sauerland is the largest tourist region in ...

claims one as well (a beech named for

Friedrich Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...

fell victim to a storm in 2007).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goethe oak Buchenwald concentration camp Individual oak trees Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Individual trees in Germany