Goethe Oak
A number of oak trees are referred to as the Goethe Oak (or, Goethe's Oak). Perhaps the most famous one is in Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. The oak is named thus because Goethe frequented the Ettersberg; the stump, damaged by Allied bombs, is preserved and is part of the Buchenwald memorial.[1][2][3] For the SS guard 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.[4][5]
Another Goethe Oak is in Krásný Dvůr Castle in Bohemia (today in the Czech Republic), estimated to be 1000 years old.
References
- ^ Cook, Christopher (11 July 2010). "Goethe's Oak". BBC Online. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
- ^ "Goethe Oak". Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
- ^ Young, Peter (2013-02-15). Oak. Reaktion Books. pp. 128–29. ISBN 9781780230597.
- ^ Neumann, Klaus (2000). Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany. U of Michigan P. pp. 179–80. ISBN 9780472087105.
- ^ Jacobson, Mark (2010). The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans. Simon and Schuster. pp. 9–10. ISBN 9781416566304.