Stock im Eisen — the Devil's nail tree

OVERVIEW

The Stock im Eisen ('staff in iron') is the midsection of a medieval tree trunk, a nail tree (Nagelbaum), into which hundreds of nails were hammered for luck over the centuries. It stands 2.19 m high, held by five iron bands dated 1575 with the initials HB (probably the house-owner Hans Buettinger), in a niche of the Palais Equitable (1891) at the corner of the Graben and Kärntner Straße. It is the oldest surviving nail tree.

HISTORY

A 1975 examination showed it was a forked spruce that started growing about 1400 and was felled about 1440; the first nails went in while it was still alive. It is first mentioned in 1533 ('the staff that lies in irons') and by 1548 was on a house wall on the square. From 1715 wandering journeyman locksmiths hammered in a nail when they came to Vienna, a custom that lasted into the late 19th century; the medieval nails were most likely votive offerings, for protection or in thanks for healing. Leopold Schmidt suggested the tree once marked the 'mythic centre' of the city.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Many legends, mostly of the 17th and 18th centuries, surround it. One says the Devil himself put the trunk in irons, or guards it. Another tells of a locksmith's apprentice who — to win his master's daughter, or having stolen a valuable nail — learned from the Devil how to forge a lock that could not be opened. In 1703 it was called the last tree of the ancient forest, and the 1911 Britannica called it the last of a sacred grove around which the city grew. The article notes the legends betray themselves: the famous 'unopenable' padlock simply has no works inside, and the story of a fleeing thief appeared only in the 17th century, when the tree already stood on a city house. A modern legend that the trunk on show is a replica is also untrue. The Devil legends became an 1880 ballet by Pasquale Borri to music by Franz Doppler.

VISITING

Behind glass on the corner of the Palais Equitable at Stock-im-Eisen-Platz, by St Stephen's Cathedral; Rudolf Weyr's reliefs of the legend are on the building's doors.