Stock im Eisen: Vienna's tree trunk full of nails, and its legend

What is the Stock im Eisen?

It's 2.19 metres tall and, according to a scientific study carried out in 1975, it's the middle section of a spruce with two tops. Halfway up it narrows sharply where it took blows from an axe, and five iron bands hold it together. The front is covered in nails from top to bottom; the back isn't. At the base, wrought-iron grass and ivy tendrils are fixed to the trunk with yet more nails.

The band around it carries a monogram, H. B., and the year 1575: it refers to Hans Buettinger, who owned the house at the time and probably had the band renewed. And the padlock of the legend, the one no one could ever unlock, is an empty iron casing with no mechanism at all. It's been a protected monument since 1974.

How long has it been there?

The tree, or perhaps just what was left of it, originally stood outside the city walls. Inside the city it first appears in 1533, in the least legendary way imaginable: in a municipal account for paving, which records twenty fathoms of cobbled street from a house to the well "where the stump in iron lies". In other words, it already had its band.

The sources place it either beside that well, in the middle of the square, or on the corner of one of the little houses that stood in front of the present façade. In the seventeenth century it moved to the house next door. And when the Equitable palace went up on the site between 1888 and 1891, the trunk was set where it still is: in a granite niche, on a pedestal a metre and a half high, on the corner with Kärntner Strasse. The building's bronze doors carry reliefs of its legend, and the square is named after it.

Why is it full of nails?

Nobody knows. The city's historical encyclopaedia admits as much: the origin of the custom is unknown, and that's exactly why the legends could grow so freely.

The most common explanation is a trade ritual: every journeyman locksmith passing through Vienna had to hammer in a nail. According to an Austrian encyclopaedia, it's documented that travelling locksmiths were doing it from 1715. But that doesn't explain how it started, because the first nails went in before the tree had died, so before 1440. The custom lasted into the late nineteenth century, and one nail with a little copper plate bears the year 1832. According to the same encyclopaedia, even the workers who built the Underground kept it up.

There are bolder explanations too. Old texts linked the nails to pagan cults, and some described the trunk as planted upside down, with its roots in the air; someone even saw in it a sacred tree from a pagan grove, buried head first as an insult. The 1975 study, on the other hand, simply describes it as the middle section of a spruce. Other traditions took it for the centre of the world or the last remnant of a primeval forest, and the Wien Museum notes that until the mid-eighteenth century, locals and visitors alike called it the mythical centre of the city.

The legend of the locksmith and the devil

The best-known version is the one summed up by the city's encyclopaedia. A young locksmith's apprentice forges the band and the unopenable padlock with the devil's help, and in return pledges his soul if he ever misses Sunday Mass. He becomes a master and never misses once, until the devil lures him into gambling and a dissolute life. One Sunday he loses track of time, remembers the pact just before twelve strikes, runs to the cathedral and reaches the Giants' Door just as Mass has ended. He drops dead on the spot.

But the versions can't even agree on the ending. In one of those collected by Gustav Gugitz in his 1952 book of Viennese legends, the boy is stuck outside the city without a penny to get the gate opened and, afraid of his master, sells his soul to a little man dressed in red. Here the tree is an oak in the Vienna Woods; the study says spruce. The city council promises master's rights to whoever can make a new key, the devil secretly twists the bit of the key, and the locksmith outwits him by putting the key in the fire the wrong way round. In the end, after a Sunday spent carousing, the little red man grows into a giant, seizes him at the Giants' Door just as Mass ends and flies off with him.

In another, printed in 1840 by Ludwig Bechstein and also collected by Gugitz, it all starts with a theft: the apprentice steals a special nail from his master, meant for a hunting lodge of Duke Leopold the Saint, gets lost in the forest and, ashamed, hammers it into a tree. That's when the devil appears. And the ending is different again: the locksmith, who heard Mass every morning to stay protected, lingers over a glass of wine in a cellar on St Peter's Square; an old woman tells him it's too late, he goes back to his drink, and the old woman, who was the devil, strangles him. The tale ends by explaining that the trunk was left as a sign that the Vienna Woods once reached that far.

People wanted to give the locksmith a face, too. They called him Martin Mux, after Martin Murr, who was credited with the splendid grille that separated the choir from the transept in the cathedral. But that grille dates from around 1640, and the 1575 band is older. In 1880 the legend even reached the Court Opera, as a fantastical ballet in four acts, Der Stock im Eisen.

When did the legend begin?

Nobody has tracked down the first time it was written down. An Austrian encyclopaedia dates the start of the legends to the seventeenth century; the oldest printed version we've read is from 1840, which doesn't mean there aren't earlier ones. What is clear is the order: first the tree, felled around 1440; then the trunk "in iron" of 1533 and the band of 1575; and much later, the devil. The legend attached itself to an object that was already old.

A neighbourly footnote: tradition placed Kolschitzky's legendary first coffee house right by this square, another famous story that didn't happen the way it's told. We explain it in Viennese coffee and the legend of the Turkish coffee sacks of 1683.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: a spruce, growing from around 1400 and cut down (or dead) by around 1440, according to the 1975 study. The trunk is already recorded "in iron" in 1533. A band with H. B. and 1575. A padlock with no mechanism.
• Fact: travelling locksmiths hammered in nails from at least 1715, and the custom lasted into the late nineteenth century.
• Unresolved: why people started nailing it before the tree had even died.
• Interpretations: the sacred pagan tree, the roots in the air, the mythical centre of Vienna.
• Legend: the locksmith and the devil, in versions with different endings. The oldest printed one we've read is from 1840.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on the route "Legends of Old Vienna", twelve stops that take you from the Anker Clock to the tree trunk full of nails. The last one, "The Tree Trunk Full of Nails", is heard on the corner of Kärntner Strasse, facing the niche. Earlier on, "Kolschitzky: A Real Spy with a Legendary Invention" introduces the man behind the legendary coffee house. If you're planning your trip, our Vienna guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• City of Vienna, Wien Geschichte Wiki, "Stock im Eisen" (in German): https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Stock_im_Eisen
• Peter Diem, "Stock im Eisen", Austria-Forum, Wissenssammlungen/Denkmale (in German): https://austria-forum.org/af/Wissenssammlungen/Denkmale/Stock_im_Eisen
• Wien Museum, "Magische Orte. Wiener Sagen und Mythen" (in German): https://www.wienmuseum.at/magische_orte_wiener_sagen_und_mythen
• Gustav Gugitz (ed.), Die Sagen und Legenden der Stadt Wien, Vienna, 1952, nos. 21 and 23, on SAGEN.at (in German): https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/oesterreich/wien/sagen_legenden_gugitz/stock_eisen.html
• Ludwig Bechstein, Volkssagen, Mährchen und Legenden des Kaiserstaates Österreich, 1840, "Der Stock im Eisen", on SAGEN.at (in German): https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/oesterreich/wien/1_bezirk/stockimeisen2.html