The Boitin Steintanz ('Stone Dance') is a very special monument to mankind’s early history. There are altogether four stone circles in the forest near the village of Boitin in the vicinity of Bützow. Three of them lie close together, the fourth one at a distance of about 200 metres. Already long ago there were theories about the age and function of the arrangement. Today it is assumed that this is a calendar from the 12th century before Christ.
A saga gives a different interpretation of the stone circles: The legend has it that a frolicsome wedding party celebrated here long ago. The party bowled with bread and sausages until a ghost, appearing as an old man, asked the boisterous group to end the game. However, the wedding party did not do what they had been asked. They scorned the old man instead. So he turned the bride, the groom and the guests into stones. A shepherd, who happened to be nearby, was to be spared. But in spite of his promise, he looked back out of curiosity when fleeing and therefore was also transformed into stone together with his sheep and dog.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.