The Peace Oak of Sossenheim

Lightning once split this oak from its crown to its roots, and it is still standing. The crack is part of the city's own description of the tree, entry 022 on Frankfurt's register of natural monuments. It was planted in 1871 to mark the peace that ended the Franco-Prussian War, which makes it a Friedenseiche, a peace oak, put in the ground in the same year the German Empire was proclaimed. That gives it something most old trees lack: a known birthday, and an age of about 150 years that nobody had to estimate. It also stands on an old line. Sossenheim was a village before it was part of Frankfurt, and until about 1800 it was closed in by a Haingraben, a fence and hedge with a ditch along it. The oak stands where the village edge used to be. Today that edge is the Wiesenfeldweg, between housing and allotment gardens, and the tree has outlasted both the Empire it was planted under and the peace it was planted for. It is 4.60 metres round and about 18 metres tall, a broad trunk for a century and a half. The city does not say whether the lightning crack is weakening it, and we will not guess. The newest dated photograph we have found is from 2020; if you have walked past since, tell us how it looks. It is free, and seen from the public way at the southern edge of Sossenheim.