Schwedenkreuz

About

Thirty metres from one of the fastest corners of the Nordschleife stands a stone cross from 1638. It commemorates Hans Friedrich Datenberg, a tax collector from Adenau, robbed and killed at this spot by deserters of the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War. The cross was damaged in 1895 and reinforced, and it still stands where the road crested three centuries before the circuit existed.

The corner took the monument's name: Schwedenkreuz, a downhill left kink taken barely off flat that drivers rank among the most demanding on the lap. Few of the people who quote the corner's name know they are quoting a grave marker.