A 500-year-old oak tree outside the town of Eutin, Germany, has been matching singles for more than a century and is reportedly responsible for 100-plus marriages | Blog | Life

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A 500-year-old oak tree outside the town of Eutin, Germany, has been matching singles for more than a century and is reportedly responsible for 100-plus marriages.

The tree receives about 1,000 letters a year

“It was my favourite part of the day,” Martens said, handing me a black-and-white photo of him wearing a brimmed cap and bifocals, smiling as he dropped letters into the oak. “People used to memorise my route and wait for me to arrive because they couldn’t believe that a postman would deliver letters to a tree.”

In 20 years, Martens said there were only 10 days when no-one wrote to the oak, and while he’d occasionally deliver as many as 50 envelopes a day, not all of them were love letters.

“Before unification [in 1990], people from East Germany who had no contacts in the West used to write to the tree and ask what kind of cars and music we had available,” Martens remembered. “I wanted to write back, but my boss recommended me not to.”

According to Martens, other messages that arrived over the years started as sweet nothings and blossomed into beautiful somethings.

The Deutsche Post has assigned a mail carrier to deliver letters to the tree (Credit: Archiv TI Eutin)

In 1958, a young German soldier named Peter Pump reached into the oak, felt several letters and pulled out a piece of paper that had just a name and address on it. On a whim, he decided to respond to the ‘Honoured Miss Marita’, who hadn’t written to the tree in the first place – her friends had, knowing she was too timid. Peter and Marita corresponded for a full year before he built up the courage to meet her. They were married in 1961 and are celebrating their 57th wedding anniversary this year.

Looking for love?

You can send the oak tree a letter at:

Bräutigamseiche
Dodauer Forst
23701 Eutin, Germany

To visit it in person, take the B76 road from Eutin towards Plön, turn right at the Alex Münster distillery and you’ll see a wooden sign pointing towards the tree on the left.

Then there’s the story of the Christiansens. In 1988, Martens delivered a letter to the oak from a 19-year-old East German girl named Claudia, who was looking for a pen pal. A West German farmer named Friedrich Christiansen found it and wrote back to her. One letter turned into 40, and the couple fell in love. Unable to meet, Friedrich and Claudia exchanged letters for nearly two years across the border. When the Wall fell, the two met for the first time and were married in May 1990.

“I know of at least 10 marriages brought together by the tree,” Martens said. “One, in particular, sticks out.”

I know of at least 10 marriages brought together by the tree

In 1989, a German TV station was doing a special feature on the oak, and asked Martens if he himself had ever found love under its branches. He said he hadn’t. A few days later, while Martens was climbing up the ladder to deliver the mail to the Bridegroom, he spotted a handwritten note from a woman named Renate addressed to the oak’s postman.

“I would like to meet you,” it read. “You are my type. At the moment, I am also alone.”

“So I called her – rather clumsily – and soon I met her,” Martens said, handing me a picture of him and Renate kissing on their wedding day. “We were married in 1994 and had our reception under the oak tree.”

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