Der Krummstab / The Crosier

As if it were stuck into the ground by a passing giant, Heinrich Brummack’s Crosier looks precariously balanced. The golden spiral at the top towers over the trail threateningly, while the rest of the slightly bent gray staff disappears into the soil of the adjacent woods.
The sculpture is based on the legend of the crosier that Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne gave to the abbot of the Grafschaft monastery when it was founded in 1072. Presented as a shepherd’s crook and reminder of caring service, the staff increasingly became a sign of the important monastery’s power and prosperity. However, one prophecy suggested that the monastery’s power would disappear if the staff were lost, which is what happened: The staff first went missing in the turmoil of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). An exact replica was made immediately, but also disappeared at the end of the 18th century. Subsequently, the monastery actually did lose its power when it was dissolved as a consequence of secularization in 1804.
The Martin Luther quote “a power too great overthrows itself” is engraved in German on the inside of the sculpture, drawing a connection between his words and the story of the crosier. It makes reference to the Reformation’s historic division of the region into Catholic Sauerland on one side of the mountain and Protestant Wittgenstein on the other. However, it also draws attention to the seemingly unstable balance of the 2,500-kilogram staff hanging over anyone hiking on the trail.

Reference: www.waldskulpturenweg.de/skulpturen/der-krummstab/die-skulptur/
Further reading: WaldSkulpturenWeg, ed. by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft WaldSkulpturenWeg, texts by Uwe Rüth, Cologne 2011.