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Goethe Oak

At the time the camp was constructed, the SS left a "German" oak standing, which was under natural protection. On old maps the tree was marked as the "fat oak."

Building of the prisoners' laundry. A long, two-story building of the simplest architecture with a high gable roof. In the foreground the leafless Goethe oak.
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Goethe oak, 1943. Photo: identification service of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

©Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon
A low detached, quite wide tree stump. In the background the former crematorium.
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The stump of the Goethe oak was preserved, 2022. Photo: Lukas Damm

©Buchenwald Memorial
A wooden sculpture depicting a face with closed eyes.
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"The Last Face", after August 1944. Author: Bruno Apitz.

©German Historical Museum, Berlin

In the memory of the inmates, this tree was associated with their knowledge of Goethe, who over one hundred years before had often spent time at Ettersberg Mountain. One of his remarks has been preserved from when he had paused at the nearby location known as "Hottelstedter Ecke":

"HERE ONE FEELS GREAT AND FREE LIKE THE GREATNESS OF NATURE BEFORE ONE'S EYES AND HOW ONE SHOULD ACTUALLY ALWAYS BE"
Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann, September 26, 1827

On August 24, 1944, when the armament factory of the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke was bombed by the Allied forces, the "fat oak" caught fired and burned. The SS then had it cut down.

From a piece of the tree Bruno Apitz secretly carved "The Last Face", the face of a dying inmate.

Today, the roots of the Goethe oak represent the self-empowerment of the inmates and their memories of a better world.

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