Meet the Tree That Helped People Find Love Before Tinder
A giant oak near the German town of Eutin is perhaps the most unusual postal address in the world. Almost daily, people from various continents still send letters there in hope of finding their one true love.
A tree known as the Bridegroom's Oak (Der Bräutigamseiche) has reportedly helped to arrange over 100 marriages.
Nowadays, people from all over the world send letters to the tree, hoping that the ancient oak might help them find a life partner.
"There's something so magical and romantic about it," 72-year-old Karl-Heinz Martens, who worked as the tree's official postman for 20 years starting in 1984, told the BBC. "On the internet, facts and questions match people, but at the tree, it's a beautiful coincidence — like fate."
According to Martens, people sending the letters look for different things. One person may want to find a travel partner, while another may hope to find the love of her life.
Often, the senders are middle-aged people, widowed or divorced, who seek a second chance at happiness.
"The idea is that everyone can read through all letters, but take only the one which they're interested in," Martens told Hamburger Abendblatt.
Thus, anyone who writes to the oak knows that his or her letter will be read by many people, but in this way the chances of finding the right person significantly increase. If one reads a letter one doesn't want to respond to, he or she puts it back on the tree so others can find it.
"The tree receives about 1,000 letters a year," a spokesman for Deutsche Post, Martin Grundler, told BBC. "Most come in the summertime. I suppose that's when everyone wants to fall in love."
At the same time, Grundler noted that the tree has not always been used solely as a romantic mailbox. Before the reunification of Germany in 1990, people from the eastern part of the country sent letters to tree (which is located in Western Germany) to "ask what kind of cars and music we had available," Martens recalled.
"I wanted to write back, but my boss advised me not to," he added.
The tree's romantic story started back in 1890, when a young German girl named Minna fell in love with a chocolate maker named Wilhelm. Minna's father opposed their relationship and prohibited his daughter from contacting the young man, so the two started secretly exchanging love letters over a knothole in the tree.
One year later, Minna's father finally allowed her to marry Wilhelm, with the wedding ceremony taking place on June 2, 1891 under the oak tree's branches.
The news of the couple's fairy-tale story spread worldwide, and soon, many Germans in search of love started writing love letters to the Bridegroom's Oak.
The oak received so many letters that in the 1920s the Deutsche Post gave the tree its own postcode and appointed a special tree postman.
It also allocated a ladder near the oak so that anyone interested in reading and answering the letters could climb up and do so.
- Source : Sputnik
