The beech growing at the Cínovec border crossing today is not the tree the stories are about. Its predecessor stood on this exact spot from around 1537, watched Emperor Joseph II and Goethe cross the Ore Mountains, and was destroyed by lightning in the 1970s after decades of decline. A young replacement went into the same ground in August 2007, with a plaque explaining what came before it. Come for the place; the tree itself is still young.
0 / 1 bezocht in Cinovec
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Hraniční buk (Cínovec border beech)
European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) · Cínovec, Ústí nad Labem Region
The tree standing here is not the tree the stories are about. The original border beech was reputedly planted in 1537 on the line between Bohemia and Saxony and grew to some six metres round. It began failing after 1945, was down to a single living branch by the 1960s, and lightning finished it in the 1970s. What grows here now went into the same ground on 18 August 2007, with an information plaque beside it. It is a young tree, slim and easy to walk past, standing in the exact spot where a mountain road has crossed a border for centuries.
The old beech collected the traffic. Emperor Joseph II is recorded passing it in 1766 and again in 1779. Goethe came through in 1813. Napoleon is supposed to have rested under it, which is the sort of thing said about every large tree on a route an army once used, and is worth about what it costs to repeat. All of that belongs to the site and to the tree that is gone, not to the sapling.
So this is a young beech holding an old address at the Cínovec crossing to Zinnwald, up in the Ore Mountains. Come for the place and the plaque that explains it. Come back in a century for the tree.
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