Peter Csendes, Historical Dictionary of Vienna, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 1999, ISBN0-8108-3562-2, p. 191.
Felix and Helga Czeike, Wien: Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte der Donaumetropole, Cologne: DuMont, 1999, ISBN3-7701-4348-5, p. 99 (German).
Péter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll, Wien volume 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur ersten Wiener Türkenbelagerung (1529), Vienna: Böhlau, 2001, ISBN3-205-99266-0, p. 93.
Michael Diers, Andreas Beyer, Mo(nu)mente: Formen und Funktionen ephemerer Denkmäler, Berlin: Akademie, 1993, ISBN3-05-002354-6, p. 115 (German).
Eve Marie Young, Art and Enterprise: The 19th Century Administrative Buildings of a U.S. Life Insurance Company: With Particular Consideration of the Vienna, Austria, building known as "zum Stock in Eisen", Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1991, pp. 137, 140.
Frances Milton Trollope, Vienna and the Austrians; With Some Account of a Journey through Swabia, Bavaria, the Tyrol, and the Salzbourg, London: Bentley, 1838, OCLC 2431804, p. 276 says that it was to show they were ready to use their "good right-hand".
Manfred Wehdorn, Mario Schwarz and Susanne Hayden, Vienna, a Guide to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Vienna: Springer, 2004, ISBN3-211-40863-0, p. 32.
Roger Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918, Cambridge, 2007, ISBN978-0-521-85256-2, p. 392, where it is translated "Pole of Iron".
Emil Goldmann, Beiträge zur Geschichte der germanischen Freilassung durch Wehrhaftmachung, Untersuchungen zur deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte 70 (1910), p. 25 (German) points out that the legends say that journeymen hammered the nails in on leaving Vienna; that would make it an offering for safe travel.
John Sullivan Dwight, Dwight's Journal of Music volume 40, no. 1032, November 6, 1880, p. 184.
sagen.at
"Der Stock im Eisen", from Ludwig Bechstein, Volkssagen, Mährchen und Legenden des Kaiserstaates Österreich, 1840, at sagen.at (German), retrieved 24 June 2010.