Devil's chair from Thurow
The devil chair by Thurow is a menhir at the district Thurow the community Züssow in the Vorpommern-Greifswald .
geography
The monolith is 1.2 km south-west of Thurow and 2.6 km south-west of Züssow, 6 m next to the federal road 111 in a forest to the south.
history
There are five Bronze Age barrows on the paddock (pasture) to the north . It is also unclear to the preservation authorities whether the hill on which the monolith stands is also a barrow. This hill was cut when the road was being built on the current B 111 around 1854; H. almost halved. It is not known whether finds were cut in the process. The monolith must have been there for a long time, otherwise it would have been destroyed by the rock breakers while the road was being built , they would not have set it up there. The patch made of field stones also indicates an older service life.
On February 19, 2015, the devil's chair or throne of the Gypsy King von Thurow was entered as "Fundplatz Oldenburg 1 (Lkr. Ostvorpommern)" in the list of ground monuments of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Name interpretation
There are two variants of the designation of the monolith:
- Thurow's devil's chair
- The throne of the gypsy king
Both names refer to the shape of the monolith, which looks like a chair when viewed from the side. On these surfaces, however, as on the whole stone, no traces of processing can be seen (drill holes, chisel points, crack marks, etc.). So it could be natural frost chipping on cracks in the stone.
The legend of the devil's chair has not yet been passed on except for the name.
The designation “Throne of the Gypsy King” has the following meaning: In the 1920s and 1930s there was probably an increased number of migrating gypsies (contemporary term for Sinti and Roma ). The authorities reacted to this with demurrage in the municipality and allocation of storage spaces. Example from the municipal log book from nearby Gützkow :
- On March 28, 1922, the magistrate decided to introduce demurrage for “gypsy hordes”….
- On January 29, 1930, the magistrate decided to allocate it to a silt site on the B 111 in front of Gützkow as a "storage site for hordes of gypsies".
Against this background, the name of the monolith becomes clear: Opposite the stone, there was a larger place at the edge of the forest with slag (but this place is now almost overgrown with trees and bushes). This is where the passing gypsies - outside the communities of Thurow and Ranzin - are supposed to stay. Whenever the clans were there, the clan chief - these heads of family associations called themselves the "Gypsy King" - sat on this stone, which is shaped like a chair on the street or square side. From there he announced the orders and the next actions, etc.
Material and dimensions
The stone is made of gray granite and has a height - above ground - of 1.8 meters. He was raised again by a club from Gribow in 2010 because he was sinking. It was found that it was about 40 to 50 centimeters deep in the earth. It is wedged with field stones that form a pavement around 2 meters in diameter. It is irregularly shaped and has a width of about 60 centimeters and a depth of 80 centimeters.
literature
- Gützkow's municipal protocol books, 1900–1944, displayed in the Gützkow Museum.
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 58 ' N , 13 ° 31' E