The past week has been positively tumescent with statue news. The first big item to come springing forward was the discovery (and subsequent removal) of a weird metal monolith that had been erected in the Utah desert. Then, as if our hands weren’t already full dealing with the story of that mysterious unit, another monolith was found bulging from the ground in Romania. Now, incredibly, we have another package from the world of outdoor statues to unwrap: The case of the missing German penis monument.
The Guardian reports that a 7-foot tall, 440 pound statue—a big, literal woody—had appeared on on southern Bavaria’s Grünten mountain years ago with no explanation, gaining enough notoriety that it’s inspired a local beer and “celebrity status in recent years as a destination for hikers.” It’s remained firmly, proudly upright for most of its history, but was reported on Monday to have been neutered so efficiently that “only a pile of sawdust” remains. In the past, the statue’s been knocked over and restored, but this time it seems to have vanished completely.
“Police in the Bavarian town of Kempten are investigating the disappearance,” the article states, “although it wasn’t clear whether a crime has been committed.” It doesn’t help the case that nobody knows who built or placed the giant hog up in the mountains in the first place. The Guardian describes the “local lore” that says “it was made as a prank birthday present for a young man whose family didn’t appreciate the gift,” and was brought up the mountain as a result. If this is the case, maybe that young man has returned to reclaim his gift, riding it down the mountainside like a sled so he can use it as an oversized hat rack in his home. Or maybe the statue has just shrunk back into the mountain with the arrival of cold weather, leaving only a sad dribble of sawdust as a sign of its winter retreat.
Read more about Germany’s top mystery over here.
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12 Comments
It’s gone back home. If you ever gone diving off the shore there, Easter Island is, like, all dicks.
No more Fucking in Austria, no more Woody in Bavaria…
Dildo, Newfoundland better watch their backs.
Hopefully they don’t remove the butt plug up there.
And yet Big Ben still stands….
For the culture that literally created modern pee porn, removal of the Giant Woody is the ultimate defenestration
Upvoted for the visual of a giant wooden cock getting thrown out a window.
i’m guessing it was The Brownshirtsi recall they had a thing for big dickswhat? too soon?
In all seriousness, there’s a more worrying thought in this story than the loss of a penis statue. Having lived in Germany for several years, and having spent a huge amount of my spare time walking its incredibly extensive network of public access hiking trails, you quickly notice all the random sculptures standing out in the open. They could be milestones, religious works, carved wayfinders, decorative border monoliths, or just random pieces of modern art. All are completely unguarded, and the most security you see is maybe an occasional fence that anyone could easily scale. I remember thinking at the time how nice it is that these pieces of art could form a decorative part of the physical and cultural landscape and remain free from vandalism- just try leaving anything like this out in the open in the US!So, hopefully this is an isolated incident, but I would be very disappointed if this represented a trend in which Europe’s outdoor artworks are no longer safe. The disappearance of a penis statue might make a good story for internet snark, but if we start seeing more incidents like this, we will have lost part of world culture.
Once again, political correctness has gotten out of control
Germany is no longer at home to Mr. Cock-Up.
Didn’t know Lorena Bobbitt enjoyed hiking.