Donar's Oak
Donar's Oak was a sacred tree of the Germanic pagans located in an unclear location around what is now Hesse, Germany. According to the 8th-century Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldo, Saint Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon missionary, and his retinue cut down the tree earlier in the same century. Wood from the oak was then reportedly used to build a church at the site dedicated to Saint Peter. Sacred trees and sacred groves were widely venerated by the Germanic peoples.
Willibald's ''Life of Saint Boniface''
According to Willibald's 8th-century Life of Saint Boniface, the felling of the tree occurred during Boniface's life earlier the same century at a location at the time known as Gaesmere.Although no date is provided, the felling may have occurred around 723 or 724. Willibald's account is as follows :
Germanic tree and grove veneration
s and sacred trees were venerated throughout the history of the Germanic peoples and were targeted for destruction by Christian missionaries during the Christianization of the Germanic peoples. Ken Dowden notes that behind this great oak dedicated to Donar, the Irminsul, and the Sacred tree at Uppsala, stands a mythic prototype of an immense world tree, described in Norse mythology as Yggdrasil.Location of ''Gaesmere''
By the nineteenth century Gaesmere was identified as in the Schwalm-Eder district, for instance by August Neander. There are a few dissenting voices: in his 1916 translation of Willibald's Vita Bonifacii, George W. Robinson says "The location is uncertain. There are in Hesse several places named Geismar." The historian Thomas F. X. Noble describes the location of the tree felling as "still unidentified". In the late 19th century the folklorist and philologist Francis Barton Gummere identified the Gaesemere of the attestation as Geismar, a district of Frankenberg located in Hesse.However, most scholars agree that the site mentioned by Willibald is Geismar near Fritzlar. In 1897 the historian C. Neuber placed the Donar Oak "im Kreise Fritzlar". While Gregor Richter in 1906 noted that one scholar considered Hofgeismar as a possible location, he himself comments that most people consider Geismar near Fritzlar as the right place. Unequivocal identification of Geismar near Fritzlar as the location of the Donar Oak is found in the Catholic Encyclopedia, in teaching materials for religious studies classes in Germany, in the work of Alexander Demandt, in histories of the Carolingians, and in the work of Lutz von Padberg. The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde notes that for Willibald it was probably not necessary to specify the location any further because he presumed it widely known. This Geismar was close to Büraburg, then a hill castle and a Frankish stronghold.