Without Lifting A Finger

Stock-im-Eisen , a photo by Alexander Gorlin on Flickr.

According to a footnote in Nerval's "Pandora," the Stock im Eisen "was the trunk of a tree reputed to be part of the forest that originally stood on the site of Vienna." * The Stock im Eisen ( German : staff in iron) is the midsection of a tree-trunk from the Middle Ages , a so-called nail-tree ( Nagelbaum ), into which hundreds of nails have been pounded for good luck over centuries. It is located in Vienna , Austria , in Stock-im-Eisen-Platz, now part of Stephansplatz , at the corner of the Graben and Kärntner Straße and is now behind glass on a corner of the Palais Equitable . History The trunk section is 2.19 m (7 feet 2 inches) tall and is held in place by five iron bands; the iron bears the date 1575 [ 1 ] and the initials HB, presumably for Hans Buettinger, the house owner who had the iron replaced. The tree was a forked spruce which started to grow around 1400 and was felled in approximately 1440, [ 2 ] as was revealed by examination in...