History

In 1725, the personal physician of the Würzburg prince-bishop, Prof. Dr. med Johannes Bartholomew Adam Beringer (1670-1738), collected more than 2000 figured stones (i.e. stones showing images) close to Eibelstadt.

These strange fossils from local ground would, he thought, win Beringer's fertile native land of Franconia as much fame as the sweet grape juice of the vine-covered hills.

On the stones were small birds, butterflies, beetles, bees, wasps, flies, fish, frogs, worms, snails, leaves, flowers, stars, comets with fiery tails; even Latin, Hebrew and Arabic characters were illustrated.

Together with the budding physician Ludwig Hueber, Beringer presented the wondrous picture stones in spring 1726, in a scientific paper to the public, as unusual but real fossils.

Like Beringer, prince-bishop Christoph Franz von Hutten and the palace architect Balthasar Neumann also took pleasure in this most extraordinary German treasure.

Nevertheless, the stones were obviously created by human hand.

But by whom?

To date, this is unknown.

They have gone down in history as Lying Stones and are known as the first scientific fraud worldwide.

You can marvel at more than 500 stones that are still in museums and collections today. Numerous legends about them and about their origin attest to an unbroken interest in them.