What is the oldest tree in Bad Staffelstein?
Hüter des Feldes (guardian of the field), also called the Rasierpinselbaum, standing beside the road to Nedensdorf. Its age is a genuine open question, sources ranging from 300 to over 1,000 years, and the tree is visibly declining. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception.
The 2003 feature film Luther put its young monk under this oak to shelter from a thunderstorm, and it still stands where the camera found it, in open fields with a stone bench at its base. Its two nicknames both describe the crown: Hüter des Feldes, guardian of the field, and Rasierpinselbaum, shaving-brush tree, for the bristled shape generations of pollarding left behind. Its age depends entirely on who is asked: a dendrology register says 300 to 500 years, while German Wikipedia, the local press and the Bayreuth conservation authority all speak of more than a thousand. That is the real spread, and narrowing it would be inventing precision nobody has. The condition matters before anyone travels: fungal disease has been killing parts of the crown since about 2013, droughts pushed it further, the trunk walls run as thin as 20 centimetres, one side is bare, and it has stopped setting acorns. Bayreuth has decided against further preservation. A June 2026 visit still recorded it vital, hollow, crown partly green.
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