Phallic statue in Bavarian mountains vanishes… just like mysterious Utah monolith

German police have launched a probe into the disappearance of a famous phallus-shaped statue on the slopes of a Bavarian mountain. And this story has uncanny echoes of that of the metal monolith discovered in Utah last week.

The two-meter-tall wooden statue had become one of the landmarks of the Grunten Mountain, south-west of Munich. The statue was marked as a “cultural monument” on Google maps, and hikers loved taking photos of themselves next to it.

But last weekend, the monument disappeared, with only a stump being left in the spot where it had been erected, Germany’s Allgaeuer Zeitung newspaper reported.

What happened to the sculpture was “a shame,” said Nikolaus Weissinger, the mayor of the nearby town of Rettenberg.

Local police have opened an investigation to establish who decided to remove the 200kg object from a mountain at a height of 1,738 meters – and why. However, a spokesperson acknowledged it wasn’t yet known whether the theft constituted a criminal offence, as the monument doesn’t seem to have an owner.

Much like with the Utah monolith, the appearance of the Bavarian phallic statue is also shrouded in mystery. It had been decorating the mountain for four or five years.

One version of what happened, voiced by the German media, claims the monument was carved by some guys as a joke birthday present to their friend. But when the gift was – unsurprisingly – rejected, the young men just rolled it up the mountain and left it there.

Last week, a cryptic 3.7-meter-tall metal monolith was found in a remote desert area in Utah, provoking numerous alien-related theories and an avalanche of Stanley Kubrick memes.

However, while people were trying to figure out the origin and purpose of the strange object, it vanished. The authorities would say only that it had been taken away by an “unknown person or group.”

On Monday, social media users shared photos of a similar-looking monolith found in Romania, near an ancient fortress and archaeological site in the city of Piatra Neamt.

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