The Menzellinde
Adolf von Menzel drew this lime into his sketchbook, and it is still standing on the corner where he found it. The study is titled "Alt-Schoenefeld Villa Lazarus": Menzel came here as a guest of the philosopher Moritz Lazarus, whose summer house stood on the plot now taken by the Schoene Heimat allotment gardens. Theodor Fontane, Paul Heyse and Clara Wieck are among the other visitors recorded at that house. Menzel noted something a visitor can still check in July: bee swarms working the flowering crown. The tree carries his name now. It is a small-leaved lime about 15 metres tall, with a crown 14 metres across and a trunk 3.50 metres round. Its age is an estimate of 200 to 300 years, and it will stay an estimate, because the trunk has no heartwood left inside it and there are no rings to count. It has been patched, not pampered. After a lightning strike an iron ring was fitted around it, a repair the local story attaches to Lazarus's time, and the bark has since grown over the metal. Today straps and iron rings brace the main limbs of the crown. Leipzig protected it as Naturdenkmal number 55 in 1996, with a protected zone 16 metres across. A sign stands at its foot, which is the easiest way to be sure you have the right tree.
scented flowers in July, later than most limesFruitAutumn colour
July, when the lime flowers and the bees Menzel noticed are back in the crown
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.
Leostrasse / corner Lazarusstrasse, 04347 LeipzigYou can recognise it by the crown braced with straps and iron rings and the Naturdenkmal sign at its foot. It stands alone on the corner of Leostrasse and Lazarusstrasse, the only protected tree on that corner.
Free; stands on the street corner of Leostrasse and Lazarusstrasse, a sign is posted at the tree (Commons photo "Hinweisschild"). Look from the pavement.
Schönefeld, about 3.5 km north-east of the city centre; stops not verified
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
