The Gerichtslinde of Zehdenick

Zehdenick's oldest tree carries a name nobody can fully explain. The Gerichtslinde, court linden, stands on Friedrich-Ebert-Platz beside the district court, and German Wikipedia's own article on it says plainly that nobody knows whether the name comes from that neighbour or whether the tree itself once hosted an assembly under its branches, the older use the word usually implies. What is documented instead is more mundane and just as old: by the 18th century, the ground beside it held military supply magazines, salt, grain and forage for the cuirassiers garrisoned in the town, and the linden was already standing over them. It is a lime somewhere between 350 and 400 years old, officially protected as Naturdenkmal number 228, though no source has ever recorded its girth or height. The trunk has hollowed with age and stands behind a low wire-mesh fence, more a courtesy than a barrier. A stone beside it reads simply "Gerichtslinde", the town's own way of saying the name has stuck regardless of the history behind it. The tree stands free to see in the town centre, a short walk from Zehdenick station on the Berlin-Szczecin line, in a part of Brandenburg few visitors pass through on purpose. Whatever it once witnessed in court, it has certainly witnessed the town grow up around it.