Raftsman Monument

Raftsman figure

The Raftsman Monument is a fountain with a statue of a violin-playing raftsman in Toruń , Poland .

Location

The monument is located in the Old Town in the western part of the Old Town Market between the Old Town Hall and the University Church of the Holy Spirit.

history

The sculpture was created by the Thorner sculptor Georg Wolf , who later moved to Berlin . The monument was funded by the citizens and was officially unveiled on June 18, 1914 in the courtyard of the town hall. In the course of the Second World War , it was dismantled in 1943 at the instigation of the occupation authorities. After the war the raftsman was set up in various places. First it was part of the fountain in front of the Collegium Minus (so-called "harmonica"), then it stood in front of the town hall and in 1954 it came to the rock garden, a park that is in the immediate vicinity of the Leaning Tower and the remains of the defense system of the old Thorn-Tors was created. In 1983 the fountain sculpture returned to the vicinity of its original location; it was set up on the west side of the Old Town Market - roughly on the site of the Kaiser Wilhelm I monument, which was removed in 1919.

description

The bronze figure stands on a sandstone plinth in the middle of a sandstone fountain, on which eight brass frogs are placed, from whose mouths the water gushes.

Legend of the raftsman

Toruń was once a hub for timber rafting to Gdańsk and a popular resting place for raftsmen. An indication of rafting in Toruń is still today the rafting clock of St. John's Cathedral facing the river and not the city center . Once a flood or, according to another version, the curse of a beggar banished from the city triggered a plague of frogs in the city. The amphibians were so troublesome to the city that the mayor offered a considerable sum of money and his daughter's hand as a reward for whoever cleared the city of the frogs. This was achieved by the raftsman Iwo, who lured the frogs with his violin and led them through the Chełmno Gate to what is now the Mokre district. There they stayed in the Mokre wetlands. The monument is dedicated to this legendary raftsman Iwo.

Rafting monument in culture

The figure of the raftsman is the trademark of the annual cultural festival of the Baltenländer Probaltica .
The gold, silver and bronze frogs awarded during the Camerimage Festival are replicas of the rafting monument. The first seven events took place in Toruń.