Timber over Tinder: Tree connecting lovers since 1892

PLAYING CUPID The Bridegroom’s Oak in Dodau forest, near Eutin, northern Germany, has a famous knothole that has been used as a “mailbox” since 1892. Photo taken March 1. —AP

EUTIN, Germany — It’s timber over Tinder in a forest in northern Germany where the Bridegroom’s Oak has connected lovers for more than a century.

Known as “Bräutigamseiche” in German, the Bridegroom’s Oak has a famous knothole that’s been used as a mailbox since 1892. It even has its own postal code in the Dodau Forest some 250 kilometers north of Berlin.

Mail carriers from the German postal service act as Cupid, delivering 50 to 60 letters to the knothole each month. They must climb a ladder to reach the arboreal mailbox about 3 meters up the 25-meter-tall tree that’s more than 500 years old.

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Visitors to the tree can leaf through the missives, some of which are mailed from other continents, and choose whether to become postal paramours with any of the letter-writers.

Leading to vows

“The resulting pen pal relationships have even led to a few marriages,” the postal service says.

The oak was first used as a waystation between a forester’s daughter and a chocolate manufacturer from Leipzig, according to the postal service. The forester initially opposed the courtship, so the couple left love letters for each other in the knothole.

They ultimately married, with the forester’s permission, under the oak’s leaves in 1892.

Send your own love letter to: Bräutigamseiche, Dodauer Forst, 23701 Eutin, Germany. —AP