The Alexandereiche

The Alexandereiche is not named after Alexander von Humboldt, which is the first thing almost everyone assumes. Freiburg's own environment office says the oak carries the name of Alexander Wasmer, the city's chief forester, who drew up the first management plan for the Freiburg city forest in 1842. A forester's paperwork is a thin sort of immortality, and a street-corner oak is more than most of them get. Note what that does not tell us. The city names the tree for what Wasmer did in 1842; no source anywhere says the tree was planted then, or gives it an age at all, and we are not going to turn a commemoration into a birth date. Nobody has published a girth for it either. Even the species is only recorded as oak: the register does not say whether it is a pedunculate or a sessile oak, and the two are easy to tell apart on the ground, since one hangs its acorns on stalks and the other sits them tight against the twig. If you go and look, tell us which it is, and we will correct the page. It has been a protected natural monument since 2 May 1974, which puts it among the older designations on Freiburg's list. It stands on the corner of Einsteinstraße and Hermann-Mitsch-Straße in northern Freiburg, a separate outing from the old town rather than a stop on one.