Gedenkeiche von Berga

Berga has two oaks, and this is not the famous one. The tree the town is known for stands by the Markt, several centuries old and on the town's arms, and it nearly went to the saw in 2012 until residents campaigned to keep it. This one was planted deliberately, and the date is on record: 18 October 1863, when the citizens of Berga marked fifty years since the Battle of Leipzig, the largest battle Europe had seen and the one that finished Napoleon in Germany. The Naturdenkmal board at the tree still says so, which is why its age needs no estimating. Planted in 1863, it is 163 years old. Young, by the standards of the oaks people travel for. Old, for a tree planted as a monument to something already half a century gone. Berga sat inside the GDR for forty years and the oak went on quietly through all of it, out at the edge of town rather than in it, on a route walkers and cyclists still use. Two things we cannot tell you. Nobody has recorded which oak it is, so if you know the leaf, tell us. And the coordinates come from a walkers' waypoint rather than a survey, so read the pin as the right corner of Berga rather than the exact trunk.