Hüter des Feldes (the Rasierpinselbaum)

The 2003 feature film Luther put its young monk under this oak to shelter from a thunderstorm. It still stands where the camera found it, in open fields beside the road to Nedensdorf, with a stone bench at its back for whoever walks out. Both of its nicknames describe the crown. Hüter des Feldes, guardian of the field. Rasierpinselbaum, shaving-brush tree, for the bristled shape that generations of pollarding left behind. Its age depends entirely on who is asked, and the gap is enormous. Baumkunde's dendrology puts it at 300 to 500 years. German Wikipedia, the local press and the Bayreuth conservation authority all speak of more than a thousand, the authority phrasing it as a tree ready to die after roughly 1000 years. That is the real spread, and narrowing it would be an invention. The condition matters before anyone travels. Fungal disease has been killing parts of the crown since about 2013, and the droughts of 2018 and 2019 pushed it further. The trunk is completely hollow, its walls as thin as 20 centimetres in places. One side is bare, the surviving leaves come smaller than they should, and the tree has stopped setting acorns. Bayreuth has decided against further preservation and is letting it go naturally. A visit in June 2026 still recorded it as vital, hollow, crown partly green. At 6.16 metres round in 2025 against 6.14 in 2011, it has essentially stopped growing.