The tree standing here is not the tree the stories are about. The original border beech was reputedly planted in 1537 on the line between Bohemia and Saxony and grew to some six metres round. It began failing after 1945, was down to a single living branch by the 1960s, and lightning finished it in the 1970s. What grows here now went into the same ground on 18 August 2007, with an information plaque beside it. It is a young tree, slim and easy to walk past, standing in the exact spot where a mountain road has crossed a border for centuries. The old beech collected the traffic. Emperor Joseph II is recorded passing it in 1766 and again in 1779. Goethe came through in 1813. Napoleon is supposed to have rested under it, which is the sort of thing said about every large tree on a route an army once used, and is worth about what it costs to repeat. All of that belongs to the site and to the tree that is gone, not to the sapling. So this is a young beech holding an old address at the Cínovec crossing to Zinnwald, up in the Ore Mountains. Come for the place and the plaque that explains it. Come back in a century for the tree.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Roadside at the Cínovec-Zinnwald border crossing site (Dubí, Teplice District), marked with an information plaque
You can recognise it as a slim, young beech rather than an ancient one, planted in 2007 to replace the original, which came down after 1945. It stands beside an information plaque at the Cinovec-Zinnwald border crossing.
Cínovec, on the Czech-German border near Dubí, Teplice District
Autumn colour
October to November: copper and russet, and young trees keep dead leaves all winter
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.