The Peace Oak of Wahren

Leipzig's register calls this tree the Friedenseiche, the peace oak, and then says nothing about which peace. German towns and villages planted peace oaks to mark the end of more than one war, usually on a square or at a crossroads where everybody would pass them. This one stands exactly there, at the junction of Am Hirtenhaus and Rittergutsstrasse in Wahren, but the city's list gives no planting year and no occasion, and we will not supply one. The street names do some of the remembering. Am Hirtenhaus means at the herdsman's house, and Rittergutsstrasse is named for a manor estate: the vocabulary of the village Wahren was before Leipzig absorbed it in 1922. The oak now stands among apartment blocks, signposts and a parked car or two, tall and upright on a single straight trunk, the oldest-looking thing at the crossing by a distance. The city protects it as Naturdenkmal number 92, with a zone 21 metres across. There is no recorded girth, height or age, so its title is the only history on file. That makes it the most answerable question on this page. Somebody in Wahren may know when the peace oak went in and what it was planted for, from a parish chronicle, a plaque that has since gone, or a grandparent. If that is you, tell us, and the page will say it.