Linden trees can live up to a thousand years. So it was probably no coincidence that on April 20, 1939, a Sunday, of all things, a young linden tree was planted in front of the butcher’s shop on the church square in Pullach. Adolf Hitler celebrated his 50th birthday on this day. The dictator who proclaimed a 1000-year Reich. The so-called Führer and his heinous crimes are long gone, but the linden tree with brown roots still stands in its place today, with the emphasis on “still”. It will certainly not be a thousand years old, the head of the environmental department of the community, Bernhard Rückerl, gives it another two years, if at all. “The tree is dying, nobody knows exactly why,” says the town hall official. Because it cannot be due to a lack of care, as the crippled pole is regularly watered by the building yard and even subjected to professional tree care. And the tree does not suffer from a fungal attack either.
So, was number 569 in the community’s tree register too heavy for the historical rucksack that it has had to carry for 83 years now? This rhetorical question was asked by Pullach’s mayor, Susanna Millennium, five years ago in one of her weekly citizens’ letters. “You could think you could literally see this burden on her: she is of rather stunted growth and poor vitality,” wrote the Green politician at the time. But now things are looking even worse for the tree, still known in the Isar valley community as “Hitler-Linde”, which doesn’t cast any brown shadows, but is a Nazi scion from root to crown. “Withered leaves, premature leaf fall, just sick,” attests environmental expert Bernhard Rückerl.
Elsewhere, trees reminiscent of the “Fuhrer” were cut down
The planting of linden and oak trees in honor of the “Führer” was standard at that time, even groups of trees in the shape of swastikas grew out of the ground at that time. For example, on May 1, 1933, a Hitler linden tree was planted in the forest of Baden, which, however, had a difficult time right from the start. It was broken off twice in the following weeks, with the perpetrators leaving a note with the following poem the second time: “In this place / no linden tree may grow / and if Hitler himself guards it / the deed will still be accomplished.” The third Hitler linden tree in Forst was dug up and destroyed after the end of the war at the insistence of the Allies.
Has the political Pullach ever considered killing off the birthday present for the despot with a saw? That would have been much easier than the currently discussed plan to rename the street named after Bishop Hans Meiser because of his controversial role during the Nazi era. No, she doesn’t know anything about a debate like this, says Mayor Thousandfriend, who is of the opinion that the tree is innocent of its history.
Three years ago there was an ideological argument in the municipal council – but not about the tree, but the new round bench on its trunk. Should the bench be made of exotic or local wood?
(Photo: Sebastian Gabriel)
She remembers an incident on this subject in the municipal council in 1983, “when the old gentlemen were still smoking Virginia and drinking beer in the boardroom.” At the time, an elderly CSU local councilor complained about a group of young people who, to his displeasure, regularly used the church square for boozy meetings and sat with their buttocks on the backrest and their feet on the seat of the bench in front of the linden tree. According to the current head of town hall, his motion to demolish the entire bank would have received a majority if four members of the committee hadn’t woken up too late from their nap and therefore accidentally voted against the motion. In the meantime, the longitudinal bench has been replaced by a round bench – after a lengthy, controversial ideological debate in the municipal council in September 2019. Local wood or tropical wood was the question at the time. Local wood made the race.
If trees actually communicate with each other, as forester and author Peter Wohlleben says, then the Hitler tree, which is a small-leaved lime by the way, will soon say goodbye to its counterpart, tree number 700. The oldest village linden tree was planted at the end of the 19th century at the time of Otto von Bismarck and stands on the other side of the street. In 1993 it almost got the better of it, it was about to be felled because its leaves were supposedly too small. The managing director at the time, Erwin Deprosse, saved them by pointing out that the small leaves were by no means a sign of a disease, but were typical of a small-leaved lime.