A tree decided Schlagsdorf had a new ruler, and later decided who got whipped for it. On 7 October 1518, Duke Magnus of Saxony summoned the village's farmers to gather under this linden and swear their allegiance, then held a regional court there the same day. Documented history rather than legend, according to the district's own account. The tree still stands in the churchyard, appears on the village's own coat of arms, and is free to visit on open church ground.
0 / 1 bezocht in Schlagsdorf
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The Gerichtslinde of Schlagsdorf
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · roughly 500 years · Schlagsdorf village churchyard
A tree decided Schlagsdorf had a new ruler, and later decided who got whipped for it. On 7 October 1518, Duke Magnus of Saxony summoned the village's farmers to gather under this linden and swear their allegiance, then held a regional court there the same day. It is documented history rather than village legend, according to the district's own account, and from 1589 a punishment post stood at the same spot for anyone sentenced to public church discipline.
The tree is old enough to have witnessed all of it. Estimated at around 500 years, with a planting date put near 1523, its several original stems have long since grown together into one trunk 8.7 metres around and a crown reaching 20 metres. It stands today in the churchyard of Schlagsdorf's Gothic village church, on the village's main street, and it appears on Schlagsdorf's own coat of arms, a four-leaved linden branch representing the village's four districts, a mark of just how central this one tree is to how the place sees itself.
No source has pinned down its exact spot within the churchyard closer than the church itself, so its pin here marks the churchyard rather than the trunk precisely. Free to visit, and open village ground.
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