Featured Amber Bear Amulet is 3500 Years Old

Discussion in 'Antique Discussion' started by James Conrad, Jun 28, 2018.

  1. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

  2. Any Jewelry

    Any Jewelry Well-Known Member

    Beautiful, and in such good condition. Archaeological amber artifacts can be brittle, but I suppose that would depend on the soil.
    It says: "The museum in Szczecin guaranteed safety, and the amber bear was placed there - probably until 1945". Where was it after 1945, and where is it now? The photograph looks recent.
     
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  3. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

  4. Any Jewelry

    Any Jewelry Well-Known Member

    Aha, probably stolen by the Germans. I can't access the other link, it says url not found.
    I think Straslund is meant to be Stralsund. Easy mistake to make.
     
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  5. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    LOL, yeah, i guess. Odd Poland hasn't asked for it back! Cool Bear, no doubt. Yes, some of those links are dead.
     
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  6. Any Jewelry

    Any Jewelry Well-Known Member

    Maybe they have. Negotiations like that can take decades. And many countries just don't bother or only ask for the big, historically important pieces.
     
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  7. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    Still, I am happy the Bear lives on & wasn't lost during the war, cool little piece.
     
  8. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
    Happiness
    "Niedźwiadek Szczęścia" is an amber figurine that was found near Słupsk in 1887. According to the then scholars who researched the find - the bear's figurine was an amulet of bear hunters, and the year of its creation was estimated for the years from 1700 BC to 650 BC. the figurine can be up to 3700 years old.

    Niedźwiadek at once met with great liking of visitors and all of Germany at that time. The then German press wrote about it extensively. For security reasons, he was taken to Szczecin, where, with special precautions, he was placed in a museum there. In Słupsk, however, a copy of a bear was placed in the Heimatmuseum.

    From the beginning, the figurine is associated with the idea that it brings happiness. And indeed, from the moment the city was found, the city was in a happy time. Intense development, thriving trade, new factories, breweries, new, neo-Gothic Town Hall is erected, a number of extremely charming tenement houses are created, many of which have survived to this day. It was at that time that Słupsk was called "Paris of the North" or - according to others - "Little Paris" (Klein Paris). Before the war, poems, tales and stories were written about Niedźwiadka. His thumbnails or copies could be bought in any trafic. Słupsk was identified with this charming bear.

    Due to the safety of the priceless amulet, the original was transported to Szczecin before the war, and at the end of the war its faithful copy went there. Until 2009, the figure was in German Stralsund, in the museum there.

    Currently, the figurine is in the National Museum in Szczecin. This exhibit is important for this museum. In the competition for children, the name was given to Słupcio. Although so much remained from the Słupsk's address in Niedźwiadka Szczęścia. The original bear figurine in September 2010 only appeared for one day in the town hall in Słupsk. We can see a copy of it on the first floor of the town hall.
    http://test.slupsk.eu/miasto/zabytki/zabytki/dokumenty/697.html
     
  9. silverthwait

    silverthwait Well-Known Member

    From 1945 to 2002...he was hibernating. He' a very old bear. Sleeps more.
     
  10. Any Jewelry

    Any Jewelry Well-Known Member

    It is a bit confusing though, this seems to be the original, made of egg yolk amber, the copy looks like cognac amber.
    [​IMG]

    It says here that the original is still in Stralsund, the copy is back in Slupsk:
    http://test.slupsk.eu/miasto/en/dokumenty/1474.html
    It gets more confusing. It says the copy is auctioned off every year and a new one made.
     
  11. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    This "bear of happiness" gets around!
     
  12. Any Jewelry

    Any Jewelry Well-Known Member

    Now I want a copy, of course.:bear::greedy:
     
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  13. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    I wonder, was Slupsk Poland a part of Germany in 1887 when the Bear was found?
     
  14. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    Me Too!
     
  15. daveydempsey

    daveydempsey Moderator Moderator

    It was part of Prussia, a German state until after WWII then it was returned to Poland
     
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  16. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    AHA! Poland may not get this Bear then, not sure how this is supposed to work exactly.
     
  17. daveydempsey

    daveydempsey Moderator Moderator

    Germany will make sure Poland don`t get it.

    They looted Greece of most of its treasures in WWII and got away with paying very little war reparations.

    The Greeks reckon the Germans still owe €279 billion
     
  18. Fid

    Fid Well-Known Member

    much easier to go back to the German names. Slupsk is Stolp, Szczecin is Stettin.
     
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  19. Any Jewelry

    Any Jewelry Well-Known Member

    But Slupsk is in Pomerania, which is Slavic, not German. So best to go back to the original Pomeranian Slavic name. And you're in luck, one of them turns out to be Stôłp, according to wikipedia.
    I like the Polish name as well, it sounds like woops, because of that Polish crossed L.:) Like Walensa-Wawensa, zloty-zwoty, etc.
     
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  20. James Conrad

    James Conrad Well-Known Member

    Well, I don't know about how this is supposed to work & although I am not a lawyer I am from Washington DC, a town where if you throw a rock out the window, you'll kill a lawyer! And if I was arguing for Germany, my argument would go something like this:
    When the Bear was found in 1887, it was in Germany, it's in Germany now, what's the problem?
     
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