Poacher stone
The Wildererstein is a memorial stone for the poacher Wilhelm Mückenheim who was shot in 1922 in the Harz Mountains in Saxony-Anhalt .
location
It is located in a wooded area on Amkenberg, southeast of the village of Elend (Harz) , which belongs to Oberharz am Brocken, at the place where Wilhelm Mückenheim died from his gunshot wound.
layout
The memorial stone is made of silica slate and is said to weigh 500 kilograms. The color of the stone is blue-black, with a strong grain with white quartz . Its roughly triangular base is 60 × 60 × 70 centimeters, with a height of about 70 centimeters. On the stone there is an inscription tablet with the inscription:
WILHELM
MÜCKENHEIM
KING OF THE WILD THIEF
APRIL 1, 1887
OCTOBER 5, 1922
As an ornament, an oak leaf with an acorn is shown to the left and right of the last two lines.
To the left of the stone there is a sign that shows the history of Mückenheim. Three deciduous trees, two maple trees and an oak were planted around the stone. A wooden bench is set up in front of the stone.
history
Mückenheim, who was born in Benneckenstein (Harz) in 1887 and also lives there, was a well-known poacher in the region and was nicknamed the King of Poachers . He was repeatedly imprisoned for hunting offenses. Nevertheless, he was anchored in the local society and enjoyed respect through successful escape attempts after arrests and generosity towards those in need in the population. On October 5, 1922, he and other poachers took part in an action against poachers carried out by two auxiliary foresters on Amkenberg. He was seriously injured by a shot, but managed to escape over a distance of 114 meters. However, he was found dead the next day, rifle in hand, under a pine tree . He was buried in Benneckenstein.
In the early 1930s, the district forester Fritz Peter had a stone set at the place where Mückenheim was found dead. However, the stone was not labeled. The initially upright stone was broken off during backwork at the end of the 1940s. He then lay unnoticed on the edge of a return path . In 1955 the stone was measured during survey work. However, this measurement was not adopted in official maps. One background could be the proximity of the location to the inner-German border at the time. In the following, the stone in the restricted border area was largely forgotten.
From 1992 - after the peaceful revolution in the GDR and German reunification there was no longer a restricted border area - Brigitte and Karl-Heinz Hahne from Königshütte (Harz) began to look for the whereabouts of the stone. With the support of regional local chronicles as well as the former head forester Finke from Obersdorf and the hunting tenant G. Hoffmann from Braunlage , the old stone was finally found in May 1996. It consists of silica slate, which is unusual for the location. With Peter Grosch, an expert in old mining examined the stone. A certificate made by him confirmed the authenticity of the stone.
From July 1996 work was carried out to create a dignified environment for the stone. So some trees were removed and a path was created. On April 27, 1997, the Benneckenstein cultural and homeland association, together with committed people from Königshütte and Elend, put up an explanatory memorial plaque and signs. The plan to carve the initials WM and the year 1922 directly into the stone had to be abandoned due to the extreme hardness of the stone. Most of the costs of over 800 German marks were taken over by the Benneckenstein association and the hunting tenant Hoffmann, Mückenheim's relatives, as well as the Harz Club branch association Elend, which also set up the bank in 2004. The three trees were planted on October 11, 2004, on the occasion of the 82nd anniversary of death, by the associations from Benneckenstein and Elend as well as the district forester Grit Defourny.
literature
- Karlheinz Brumme: misery - chronicle of a resin village under the Brocken . 2nd expanded edition, 2010, p. 190 f.
Coordinates: 51 ° 43 ′ 34.3 " N , 10 ° 38 ′ 53.6" E