The Sängereiche on the Elbe Meadows
This oak was planted for a song festival, and the sources still argue over whether it is the oak they planted. In July 1865 Dresden hosted the first German Sängerbundesfest, and a festival hall went up on this stretch of the Elbe meadows. On 13 November that year, according to the Ostdeutsches Baumarchiv, Heinrich Hartwig and two gardeners planted a memorial oak where the hall had stood. That is where the agreement ends. A festival booklet from 1925 says the November tree was the singers' own gift, a young oak that choirs from around Leipzig had carried through the procession in a tub, and that it later had to be replaced after vandals got to it. Rainer Pfannkuchen, once head of Dresden's nature-protection authority, reads it the other way: the festival oak died of drought, and the November 1865 planting was already the replacement. So the trunk in front of you is either the 1865 tree, which would make it about 160 years old, or a later stand-in, and nobody has settled which. Whichever it is, the open ground has suited it. In 1994 it stood 26 metres tall under a crown 20 metres wide, and its girth grew from 3.80 to 4.26 metres between 1994 and 2018. Since 2013 it has had a neighbour it never asked for: the Waldschlösschenbrücke now crosses the river about 25 metres away, and the Elbe cycle path runs past its feet.
catkins hang before the leaves are fully outacorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in themAutumn colour
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.
Elbwiesen (Waldschlösschenwiese), beside the Waldschlösschenbrücke and the Körnerweg / Elbe cycle path, Radeberger Vorstadt You can recognise it as the oak standing on its own on the widest part of the meadow, its trunk over four metres round. It stands about 25 metres east of the Waldschlösschenbrücke railing, just north of the cycle path.
Free. Stands on the open public Elbe meadows beside the asphalted Körnerweg / Elbe cycle path; no entry, open at all times.
Not timetable-verified. Neustadt bank of the Elbe at the Waldschlösschenbrücke; the Bautzner Strasse stops on the plateau above are roughly 10 to 15 minutes on foot down to the meadows (check stops before quoting).
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
