Klenkes-Denkmal, Aachen

The Klenkes is a distinctive mark of Aacheners and a greeting among themselves. It is the upraised little finger of the right hand. Since 1970 a monument by the Aachen sculptor Hubert Löneke at the Holzgraben reminds of the Klenkes.

Aachen was known for its cloth industry and thus also for its needle factories. The workers, mostly children, used their right little finger to sort out the needles. This activity, the "notching" of the faulty needles on the belt, led to malpositions and growth defects of the little finger in the people. As a result, people from Aachen could often recognize each other at a distance by their malformed little finger, even without words. In the course of time, the cloth industry increasingly lost its dominant role in the Aachen area. But the landmark of the Klenkes remained, for example the radio tower built in 1984 in the Aachen forest was given the official name Mulleklenkes, which in High German means something like speaking Klenkes.