Hour oak

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The hour oak was a legendary oak in the Brandenburg / Berlin area . Hourly oak is also the name of a sculpture by the artist Franziska Uhl and a documentary film by the director Gerd Kroske , which depict and document the historical oak.

The striking tree, which is protected as a natural monument, stood isolated and clearly visible until 2004 between the guardrails on the median of the Berliner Ring (A 10) between Ludwigsfelde and the Nuthetal triangle . The tree got its name from the drivers on the heavily frequented autobahn , which in GDR times took about an hour from there to downtown East Berlin . According to the Berliner Zeitung , the hour oak was "Brandenburg's most famous tree".

Tree story

The approximately 150-year-old tree stood at kilometer 82 of the A 10, which was built in 1938, for over half a century. According to the responsible motorway maintenance authority, there is usually nothing on such a narrow median. Nevertheless, the tree was preserved even after the installation of the central guardrail during the six-lane expansion of the autobahn after German reunification , by pulling the planks around the tree in a slight curve. Twice a year, the oak, which has long since become a symbol and whose owl was clearly recognizable on the nature reserve when driving past the trunk, was tended by a horticultural company.

Sculpture hour oak from 2005 on the town hall square in Ludwigsfelde

In 2004 the tree could no longer be kept and had to be felled on May 7th. It was hollowed out inside and threatened to lose its stability. The felled trunk was over a meter in diameter, five meters in length and weighed six tons. The state of Brandenburg left the tribe to the graphic artist and sculptor Franziska Uhl for artistic processing.

sculpture

The Brandenburg Minister of Infrastructure, Frank Szymanski , the Mayor Heinrich Scholl and the artist unveiled the work of art on May 9, 2005 - exactly one year after it was felled - on the Ludwigsfeld Town Hall Square opposite the Kulturhaus der Mittelstadt . In the space of the spacious square, the tree occupies a similarly prominent position as it did on the motorway at the time. The sculpture, called the hour oak, consists of two parts that face each other with smooth inner surfaces at a distance of around half a meter. Franziska Uhl understands the tree, which has always been a special landmark for her , as a symbol of human life :

“The concept of my sculptural work is to bring trees that have had to be felled into the studio, to debark them there and to look at them, to follow their grown form and to discover and carefully bring out an inkling of the human body in this form. I only work with a chainsaw to a limited extent, rather with a chisel and above all with flex and grinding wheels. This is how tree-people emerge, metamorphoses, pictorial integration of people with trees and vice versa. At the end of my work, I burn the outermost layer of the tree sculptures and oil them several times with linseed oil. This seals the tree and gives it a black, silky shimmering surface that feels like human skin. The tree goes through a metamorphosis, whereby for the most part it retains its individually grown shape and yet finds itself again in a new expression. There are shapes: curved, stretched, moved, calm, proud, humble. "

- Franziska Uhl, homepage

The city and the Ludwigsfeld housing association Märkische Heimat bore the costs for the installation . The state of Brandenburg supported the work with 5000 euros from the class lottery . Documentary filmmaker Gerd Kroske was one of the supporters of the project .

Cinematic reception

Gerd Kroske accompanied Franziska Uhl's work for half a year and shot the 60-minute documentary The Hour Oak about the tree and the work of art . The film, for which Kroske also wrote and directed the script , was broadcast by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg in 2006 .

Web links

Commons : Stundeneiche, Ludwigsfelde  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katrin Bischoff: Comeback for the hour oak . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 2, 2005, Local p. 29
  2. ↑ Katrin Bischoff: The oak from kilometer 82.0 . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 11, 2003, Local p. 20
  3. ↑ a b c d Press release April 29, 2005  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. country Brandenburg@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.mir.brandenburg.de  
  4. ↑ Press release May 19, 2004  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. country Brandenburg@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.mir.brandenburg.de  
  5. ↑ Sculpture ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Homepage Franziska Uhl @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.franziska-uhl.de
  6. ↑ News. ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Homepage Franziska Uhl @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.franziska-uhl.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 18 ′ 3.3 ″  N , 13 ° 9 ′ 8.2 ″  E