Jimks
Jimken were Polish raftsmen and shipmen in Prussia . In the Polish language they were also called "flisak", "flis" or "oryl".
In the summer there was extremely brisk shipping traffic on the Memel , the soot and atmospheric currents . The huge drifts slowly meandered between passenger and freight steamers. The mighty tree trunks were combined with bast fibers or willow rods to form so-called panels and these again to form a long course, a drift. These drifts ( Traften on the Vistula ) used to come mostly from Russia and were almost always served by Polish Jews, known as Flissaks or Schimken. In a caftan and mostly barefoot, they could move quickly and steer the whole raft with very long oars (pots). The jimks lived on the drifts in simple straw stalls. When it was cold, they made a fire on the raft. The simple meals, mostly supper, were prepared on the bank. The raft was then fixed with beams in the ground (Schricken).
Such images, which were ubiquitous in the past, like the melancholy song of the Flissaks, have disappeared in the interwar period .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ (zeno.org) Dschimken in Meyers, 1905
- ↑ Jimken in Pierer, 1857 (zeno.org)
- ↑ Rafts on the Vistula (Feddersen 1873)
- ↑ River traffic in the Memel area (GenWiki)
- ^ Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon . Würzburg 2002, p. 71