The Mysterious tailor’s scissors

Rätselhafte Schneiderschere – High in the hills above the town of Heidelberg lies a riddle carved in stone at the side of a forest path. A mysterious stone and chiselled into it – a pair of scissors and an inscription. What might this mean?

According to folklore, the owner of the scissors, a tailor from the nearby village of Gaiberg, was murdered at this very spot. This gruesome interpretation is no coincidence: after all, the depiction of scissors often has a strong symbolic content. In Greek mythology, Atropos, was one of the Three Fates goddess trio and was known as “the Inflexible One.” It was Atropos who chose the manner of death and ended the life of mortals by cutting their threads with her “abhorred shears”.

According to a less ‘incisive’ interpretation, an ancient district boundary ran along this spot, a boundary divide that led from the Plättelshöhe over the Leopoldstein from the north to this place and then over the Drei Eichen to the south. This path was an old escape route for the people of Heidelberg across the Waldgebirge mountains to the south when there was war in the Rhine Valley.

The scissors can also represent a crossroads: One path leads to Gaiberg, one ‘shears off’ down the valley.

The meaning of the chiselled letters is also unclear. You can recognise the ‘AIS’ – and the dates 1729 and 1841.

Can the secrets that the stone of the tailor’s shears holds ever be revealed?

Incidentally, the stone gave its name to the neighbouring Schneiderschere hut.