Tanzlinde (Baldenhain)
How do I find it? You can recognise it by three heavy limbs splayed open like a chalice from a hollow trunk (8.5m round), propped and cabled for support. It stands in the open village centre, opposite the fire station.
Around 1900 the inn across the road served drinks from a platform built inside this tree. The flat spread of limbs that carried it is still there, and the village children have taken it over as somewhere to climb, which is a fair summary of what a Tanzlinde is for: a tree trained to be used. Both the regional conservation register and the dendrological survey call this one of the thickest and most complete dance limes left in Germany. The trunk measured 8.5 metres round in April 2024 and was in vital condition; it is hollow, open along one side, and rises into three heavy limbs that spread out like a chalice and rest on props. Its age is put at 400 to 600 years, an estimate from girth rather than a ring count, which is the only option on a trunk with its middle missing. Somebody looks after it. The crown is held by steel cables and textile straps and gets regular attention, and the tree has been protected as a Naturdenkmal since 1978. You find it in the middle of Baldenhain, a small village on the Thuringian side of the Vogtland, standing opposite the fire station on open ground with nothing to pay and nobody to ask.
- Species
- Large-leaved Lime (Tilia platyphyllos)
- Girth
- 8.5 m
- Location
- Village centre, opposite the fire station, Baldenhain, a district of Langenwolschendorf, Greiz district, Thuringia (Baldenhain, Vogtland/Thuringia border)
- Access
- Free, public. Stands in the open village centre.
- Getting there
- Small village (Baldenhain, Langenwolschendorf) on the Thuringia/Saxony Vogtland border, Greiz district; a car is the practical way in.
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