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] According to Amos Oz, the incorporation of the oak in the camp and its subsequent destruction is evidence that the Nazis destroyed their own heritage.[6] The oak was sketched by Léon Delarbre, who used to sit under its "charred limbs" and compose verse.[7]
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.
- ^ Oz, Amos (2009). The Amos Oz Reader. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 384. ISBN 9780156035668.
- ^ Jenkins, David Fraser (2000). John Piper: The Forties. New Age International. p. 84. ISBN 9780856675348.