Sachsenbrunn maps one tree: the Tanzlinde, one of only five dance-lindens left in Germany, a lime tree with an octagonal dance platform built into its crown. First recorded in 1662 and still danced on every year since 2010, it is the oldest and thickest of the five. Published alone here because the tree itself is the destination, not because Sachsenbrunn's research is finished.
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Tanzlinde Sachsenbrunn
Large-leaved Lime (Tilia platyphyllos) · roughly 350 to 360 years · Sachsendorf, Sachsenbrunn
Germany has five lime trees with a dance floor built into the crown, and this is the oldest and thickest of them. The octagonal platform sits about two and a half metres up, reached by a solid staircase, and it is still danced on: the Tanzlinde Sachsenbrunn association has run a linden festival here every year since 2010.
The tree first appears in writing in 1662, in a community inventory that calls it one of "zwey Lindlein", two little lindens. That places its planting in the years just after the Thirty Years' War ended, which is where the estimate of roughly 350 to 360 years comes from. Baumkunde's register measured the trunk at 4.76 metres round in June 2026, up from the 4.3 metres recorded in 1994. The same two sources disagree about its height, 10 metres against 13, and nobody has settled which is right.
The other four dance limes stand at Effeltrich, Limmersdorf, Peesten and Oberstadt. This one is short, broad and heavily built, less a specimen than a piece of village furniture that happens to be alive, out in the open by the Werra bridge with a staircase up its side. Sachsenbrunn puts a lime on its coat of arms, and this is the tree it means.
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