Slide Show...
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"I want to get as old as this tree
",
that's what I
thought when I saw that oak tree the first time.
Sadly, this is not going be to happen as it
is appr. 1200 years old ... Thus, it is the oldest
oak tree in Germany!! Alongside other very old oak trees
(at least 800 years old) it is located near Ivenack,
a little village next to Stavenhagen in
Mecklenburg(West Pomerenia).
"Stavenhagen" -
a town that's known at least to all old
northern Germans as the famous local writer Fritz Reuter
was born here. He knew the old oak trees and immortilized
his impressions in a poem, written in low-german:
"Ick weit einen
Eikbom, de steiht an de See,
However, not just this giant oak tree with a trunk girth of
11 meters, a height of 35.5 meters and 180 solid cube meter of timber is always worth visiting.
If the reader after this reading decides to travel to
Ivenack or to make a little detour to Ivanack on his way
to the baltic sea coast I would like to give some useful
advice. The way to the deer enclosure leads past the impressive stables of the stud farm founded in 1790. The famous white horse stallion Herodot lived here. It was abducted in 1806 and brought back by general field marshal Blücher after the "Paris Peace" in 1814. An old chronicler stated that Napoleon rode that stallion on all his victorious military expeditions. The then count Albrecht Joachim of Plessen and his sons played a decisive role in founding the first German racecourse in (Bad) Doberan. Shortly after his death a world famous English horseman visited the stud farm on his trip through Germany. In the "Sporting Magazine" of 1829 he reported amongst other things: "We were very
much pleased with the approach to this grand seat, which
was through a noble avenue of oaks; and - the first I had
seen in Germany - a deer park adorned the domain... ; The
timber in this park is particularly tine; there is a
piece of water, four miles round; and - as far as I could
judge by merely driving through it - a good herd of
party-coloured fallow deer. To us the grand sight was now
to come - of course I mean the stud. Reader, do not
stare; neither imagine I am writing with a traveller's
licence, when I statethat in the two first stables we
entered we saw one hundred horses in condition - that is
to say, with sleek coats and in body clothes! These were
exclusive of race-horses, hacks, &c. which were
dispersed in other stables. The breeding stud, at the
Count's death, consisted of about twenty stallions and
one hundred and thirty brood mares, which, with colts of
various ages and foals, made the sum total rather
more than five hundred..."
by Charles James Apperley, better known under his pseudonym
"Nimrod". |
