The 1.000 year old oak

Europe's "oldest" oak

The "thick oak", as people call what is perhaps the oldest oak in Europe, has around 1,000 years under its belt. You have to imagine everything that has happened during this time, while it grew towards the sky of Bierbaum, grew thirty metres high and developed a trunk diameter of 2.5 metres.

Its beginning was in the time of Charlemagne, and when Columbus discovered America, it was already 700 years old. Many generations of children played in its shade, grew older, celebrated festivals and passed away. In the 1970s, things became critical for the oak tree for the first time. After a lightning strike, concrete had been carelessly poured into the hollow trunk - soon real tree doctors had to come and prove their skills on it.

Fortunately, it could be saved, so that many people can still rest under it, listen to its silence and absorb something of its stillness. Fascinating, apart from the thought of the length of her existence, is the fact that all fifty generations who have owned the tree over the course of 1,000 years have refrained from exploiting the wood, leaving it alive...Moments in her shade