"Swastika" Forest

[Jambhalheart]

The forest swastika was a patch of carefully arranged larch trees covering a 3,600 m² (4,300 sq yd) area of pine forest near Zernikow, Uckermark district, Brandenburg, in northeastern Germany. The reason behind the planting of the trees is unclear, but it has been suggested that it was laid out in 1937 by locals to prove their loyalty after a businessman in the area was denounced and sent to a concentration camp by the Nazi Party for listening to the BBC, or that a zealous forester convinced local Hitler Youth members to plant the trees in commemoration of Adolf Hitler's birthday.

For a few weeks every year in the autumn and in the spring, the colour of the larch leaves would change, contrasting with the deep green of the pine forest. The short duration of the effect combined with the fact that the image could only be discerned from the air and the relative scarcity of privately owned aeroplanes in the area meant that the swastika went largely unnoticed after the fall of the Nazi Party and during the subsequent Communist rule. However, in 1992, the reunified German government ordered aerial surveys of the state-owned land. The photographs were examined by forestry students, who immediately noticed the design.



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The Brandenburg state authorities, concerned about damage to the region's image and about the possibility that the area would become a pilgrimage site for Nazi supporters, attempted to destroy the design by removing 43 of the 100 larch trees in 1995. The figure remained discernible with the remaining 57 trees, though, and in 2000 German tabloids published further aerial photographs showing the prominence of the swastika. By this time, ownership of around half the land on which the trees sat had been sold into private hands, but permission was gained to fell a further 25 trees on the government-owned area on December 1, 2000, and the image was largely obscured.

"This is something of a wound, so we really want to do something," state agriculture ministry spokesman Jens-Uwe Schade said. "We want to finally bring this to a conclusion."


Schade said forest swastikas were planted at several places in Germany during the Nazi era, but others had been removed long ago. According to local reports, unsuspecting children the forest warden lay out string on the ground for the swastika pattern, Schade said.

"It seems to have been something of a fashion among Nazi loyalist forest wardens," he said.

Ironically, the trees survived not only the Nazi defeat in 1945 but also four decades of official anti-fascist ideology in former communist East Germany.

Some speculate that local villagers simply wanted no trouble under the communist dictatorship. Then again, the swastika is visible only from a certain height and private planes were unheard of under communism.

"In East German times, agricultural planes flew over all the time and no one noticed a thing," Chief Forest Warden Rolf Leib said Monday, as he supervised the operations.


In September 2006 the International Herald Tribune reported on another forest swastika in Eki Naryn, Kyrgyzstan, on the edge of the Himalayas. It is about 600 feet across, but does not resemble the swastika symbol as much as the Zernikow forest swastika.