The Hutteneiche

On 7 May 1515 Duke Ulrich of Württemberg took his stable master out hunting in this forest and killed him. The dead man was Hans von Hutten, and the quarrel is usually told as a matter of the duke pursuing Hutten's wife. By the tradition attached to this spot, Ulrich then hung the body from an oak, and the oak standing here carries the name. Be careful about what that does and does not mean. No source claims the tree you walk to is the same individual that stood here in 1515; the story belongs to the place, and this tree inherited it. Two independent accounts, an encyclopedia entry and a walkers' trail note, tell it the same way, which is about as far as a five-hundred-year-old rumour can be corroborated. Nobody has dated this oak or measured its girth, and we would rather say so than invent a number. If you know its age, tell us. It is not on Stuttgart's list of 89 official natural monuments, so it stands here on its history rather than on any designation. The city did put up a signboard naming it in the forest in January 2013, which is how most walkers find it at all. One honest warning about the walk. The pin marks the point our sources give, and a visitor's note puts the trunk roughly 130 metres southeast of the signpost, off the marked path. Expect to hunt for it a little.