H OLise and Garden 
BURIED IN A TREE 
/^NE of the most curious mausoleums 
in the world was recently dis¬ 
covered in an orchard at the village of 
Noebdenitz in Saxe-Altenburg. A gigan¬ 
tic old oak-tree, which a storm had 
robbed of its crown, was up for public 
auction. 
Among the bidders happened to 
be Baron von Thummel. The Baron, 
who lives on a neighboring estate had 
ridden to the auction place quite acci¬ 
dentally. As no one seemed eager to 
help out the auctioneer, he started the 
bidding at a small hgure. This aroused 
the peasants’ suspicion; they thought 
there might be some value in this old 
tree, and the battle raged for an hour, 
until finally the tree was knocked down 
to the Baron for hfty dollars. Upon his 
arrival at the castle he told an old servant 
of his purchase, describing the tree and 
its situation. The old servant said he 
remembered attending the funeral of a 
Baron ^hummel seventy or eighty years 
ago, and that the body had been buried 
in a i,ooo-year-old oak, then standing 
on a plot of ground belonging to the 
parsonage. 
Investigation proved rhat the orchard 
had once been the property of the 
village church, and that at one side 
of the old oak was an iron shutter, 
rusty and timeworn, that the people of 
the village had always supposed to have 
been placed there by some joker or mis¬ 
chievous boys. This iron shutter proved 
to be the gate to the mausoleum of Bar¬ 
on Hans Wilhelm von Thummel, at one 
time Minister of State of Saxe-Alten¬ 
burg, who died in 1824 and wished to be 
buried “in the i,ooo-year-old tree he 
loved so well.” The oak, which mea¬ 
sured about ten feet in diameter, had for 
over a century been hollow, so it was 
learned, beginning at a point about hve 
feet above its base. In this hollow 
Baron Hans caused to be built a sepul¬ 
chre of solid masonry large enough to 
accommodate his coffin. The coffin 
was placed there, as the church records 
show, on March 3, 1824, the open¬ 
ing was closed by an iron gate. In the 
course of time a wall of wood grew over 
the opening, which had been enlarged 
to admit the coffin and workmen, and 
for many years, it has been completely 
shut, thus removing the last vestige of 
the odd use to which the old tree had 
been put.— Exchajige. 
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