Goethe Oak
File:Goetheeichen Silkerode.jpg, Thuringia; Goethe, on his first tour of the Harz (1777), is supposed to have walked along them.]]
Goethe Oak (or Goethe{{'}}s 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.
History
Perhaps the most famous one is the oak tree near Weimar, 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",{{cite book|last=Gorra|first=Michael|title=The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RraGQeVSbJgC&pg=PA16|year=2009|publisher=Princeton UP|isbn=9781400826018|page=16}} or, alternatively, the location where he composed the Walpurgisnacht passages of his Faust. 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.{{cite news|url=http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/startseite/articleEMAWX-1.73138|last=Prisoner 4935|title=Über die Goethe-Eiche im Lager Buchenwald|date=4 November 2006|work=Neue Zürcher Zeitung|language=German|others=Wojciech Simson (trans.)|accessdate=8 March 2014}}
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.[https://www.buchenwald.de/en/543/ Goethe Oak. Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation]. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
The end of the Buchenwald oak
File:MK38023 Goethe-Eiche Buchenwald.jpg
The beech forest was cleared in 1937 to make way for the Buchenwald concentration camp. 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.{{cite news|url=http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/newsticker/goethe-zeichnungen-in-buchenwald--portraets-juedischer-haeftlinge-im-schillermuseum-vom-antlitz-zur-maske,10917074,9644216.html|title=Goethe-Zeichnungen in Buchenwald, Porträts jüdischer Häftlinge im Schillermuseum: Vom Antlitz zur Maske|last=Aly|first=Götz|date=27 May 1999|work=Berliner Zeitung|language=German|accessdate=8 March 2014}} 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.{{cite book|last=Young|first=Peter|title=Oak|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=37X-stnokDwC&pg=PA128|date=2013-02-15|publisher=Reaktion Books|isbn=9781780230597|pages=128–29}}{{cite news|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00swq96|title=Goethe's Oak|last=Cook|first=Christopher|date=11 July 2010|work=BBC Online|accessdate=7 March 2014}}{{cite web|url=http://www.buchenwald.de/en/543/|title=Goethe Oak|publisher=Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation|accessdate=7 March 2014}} 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.{{cite book|last=Neumann|first=Klaus|title=Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P1wXXkiD5kYC&pg=PA179|year=2000|publisher=U of Michigan P|isbn=9780472087105|pages=179–80}}{{cite book|last=Jacobson|first=Mark|title=The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ay4YLEhc_rUC&pg=PA9|year=2010|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9781416566304|pages=9–10}} According to Amos Oz, the incorporation of the oak in the camp and its subsequent destruction are evidence that the Nazis destroyed their own heritage,.{{cite book|last=Oz|first=Amos|title=The Amos Oz Reader|url=https://archive.org/details/amosozreader0000ozam|url-access=registration|year=2009|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=9780156035668|page=[https://archive.org/details/amosozreader0000ozam/page/384 384]}} In Der Totenwald, camp survivor Ernst Wiechert 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's L'Arbre de Goethe (1965).{{cite journal|last=Ziolkowski|first=Theodore|year=2001|title=Das Treffen in Buchenwald oder Der vergegenwärtigte Goethe|journal=Modern Language Studies|volume=31|issue=1|pages=131–50|doi=10.2307/3195281|jstor=3195281|language=German}} The oak was sketched by Léon Delarbre, who used to sit under its "charred limbs" and compose poetry.{{cite book|last=Jenkins|first=David Fraser|title=John Piper: The Forties|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y7WuzDK3dSkC&pg=PA84|year=2000|publisher=New Age International|isbn=9780856675348|page=84}}
Other Goethe oaks
Another Goethe oak is in Krásný Dvůr Castle in Bohemia (today in the Czech Republic), estimated to be 1000 years old.{{cite web|url=http://www.czech.cz/en/Life-Work/Living-here/Leisure-time/The-most-beautiful-Czech-gardens-and-parks-%E2%80%93-Part|title=The most beautiful Czech gardens and parks – Part 3 (Bohemia)|work=Hello Czech Republic|accessdate=7 March 2014}} The Arnsberg Forest Nature Park in Sauerland claims one as well (a beech named for Friedrich Schiller fell victim to a storm in 2007{{cite web|url=http://www.neheim-huesten.de/home/nachrichten/2874-erkundung-des-wanderweges-kurfuerstlicher-thiergarten.html|title=Erkundung des Wanderweges Kurfürstlicher Thiergarten|last=Wessel|first=Stephan|date=19 July 2011|language=German|accessdate=9 March 2014}}).{{cite web|url=http://www.urlaub-und-reise-news.de/reiseNews-Geschichte-am-Wegesrand---Wandern-im-Kurf%C3%BCrstlichen-Tiergarten-Arnsberg_8573.html|title=Geschichte am Wegesrand - Wandern im Kurfürstlichen Tiergarten Arnsberg|date=19 July 2012|publisher=Urlaub und Reise News|language=German|accessdate=9 March 2014}}
References
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{{Commons category|Goethe Eiche (Buchenwald)|Goethe oak, Buchenwald}}
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Category:Buchenwald concentration camp