Say 1: In the old days a huge giant lived here. When he had just gone to sleep, the prayer bell rang and disturbed his sleep. This made him so angry that he took a boulder and threw it at the church. But the big stone missed the target, because it fell about 300 m in front of the church and remained there.
Say 2: On a hot summer day, God hit Donar so hard with his hammer in the clouds that a rock loosened and fell to the earth. This rock was named Sürkenstein.
From Baring's "Saalechronik" from 1744:
And so that I don't leave this untouched either: in our Haynholze above Salz-Hemmendorf there is a raised large stone, almost square, as the Sürkenstein is called. But whether there was an idolum and idol on it in Heydenthume remains to be seen. The name itself is not at all old: because I was told that an old resident in Salzhemmendorff, named Sürie or Sürcke, (I knew two of these names as Franz Sürken and Heinrich Sürken, father and son), when he came to the Hayn- Wood gone, its hour of rest on this stone, and hence the name.