Napoleon's bench
In many places in the Palatinate, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Alsace you can find these somewhat outdated sandstone benches. They are located on streets or paths, on former postal routes, on mountain passes, by streams, by lakes, in clearings, under trees, at high crosses, etc. ... This is a "seating and storage furniture" made to place a load that was carried on the head or back on the higher surfaces (lintel or widened capital) and to rest on the bench next to it or underneath it.
Most of the time it was women (e.g. market women, farmers' wives, maids, etc. ...) who carried firewood, crops, butter, hay, manure, etc. ... in baskets on their heads and covered long distances with them. The benches that were set up between the 18th and 19th centuries were popular resting places. They are colloquially known as Napoleon benches, butter benches, resting stones or post benches.
Entrance to Schweighofen (bench from 1811)They all look more or less similar. However, there are differences in the design and construction. The simple post benches consist of a seat and two cheeks attached to the side (they are only used for resting), while others have a stone bench for sitting and next to it a higher stone bench for laying down loads, while others consist of two stone columns with a widened capital for laying down loads and a transverse sandstone block in between for sitting. The individual sandstone elements were put together in different ways. The transverse sandstone slabs of the vertical cheeks rest on a post base or a separate stone, or are in a groove or stuck in a tenon. In addition, there are sometimes metal bands that hold the individual slabs together.