The Lindens of the Ottobrunnen

Two trees, one monument. Bamberg's natural monument register lists number three as "2 Linden am Ottobrunnen", a pair of small-leaved limes on the wooded hillside above Wildensorg, and protects them as a single entry rather than as two trees that happen to stand together. They face the Ottobrunnen, a spring on the Bamberger Weg, the footpath that climbs out of the city into the Berggebiet. The well carries the name of Otto of Bamberg, the bishop who died in 1139. That name belongs to the water and to the ground around it, and nothing on record attaches these two limes to him, so the story stops where the sources do. A lime beside a well is one of the older arrangements in German village life, the tree marking the water and the meeting place at once. Whether that is why this pair is here, nobody wrote down. What is written down is the protection: both fall under the city ordinance of November 1995, amended in 2007, which means neither can be felled or cut back at anyone's convenience. Go for the walk rather than for the trees alone. The path is wooded, the climb is short, and the pair stands at the top of it with the spring opposite. Neither lime has been dated and neither trunk has been measured. If you get up there with a tape, tell us what they come to.