The prosecutor's office charged activists from the Last Generation with vandalizing the Mermaid monument on the Vistula boulevards. According to investigators, Julia P. and Marianna J. poured orange paint on the monument on March 8. The women plead not guilty.
Piotr Antoni Skiba, a spokesman for the district prosecutor's office, said that on March 8, on Gen. Patton Boulevard, Julia P. and Marianna J. were to damage the Mermaid sculpture, the fountain basin and the sandstone plinth by pouring a significant amount of orange paint on the monument.
Losses amounting to over PLN 360,000
Prosecutor Skiba emphasized that the women's actions caused losses worth a total of PLN 361,607.36. The amount is due to the fact that paint soaked into the plinth and basin of the fountain and caused permanent contamination inside the stone structure. The protective coatings on the Mermaid were also removed during cleaning, which left the historic sculpture unprotected.
– The amount of this amount was calculated on the basis of the position of the Mazovian Provincial Conservator of Monuments and the opinion of an expert in the field of stonemasonry, as well as the unit responsible for the care and conservation of the sculpture in the structures of the capital city of Warsaw – added prosecutor Skiba.
The activists did not admit to the alleged act and refused to provide explanations.
Mermaid covered with paint twice
Let us remind you: On March 8, climate activists from the Last Generation group poured orange paint on the Mermaid monument. The group then posted a video of the action on social media. The recording showed two young women standing on the historic monument. – This is an alarm, we are the last generation – one of them shouted. After a while, they both poured paint from the buckets onto the sculpture.
Syrena was also devastated on the last weekend of September. As we reported on tvnwarszawa.pl, on the night from Saturday to Sunday someone placed an inscription on the monument: “Against all empires.” A symbol of anarchy was also left next to it – the letter A in a circle.
Rafał Rutkowski from the Warsaw Police Headquarters told us that the incident took place on Sunday around 4 am. – We can talk about two people here, one of whom painted the monument's pedestal with black paint – Rutkowski informed.
The on-site inspection was carried out by a forensic technician. Later, the damage was estimated by a conservator.
The monument survived the war, although it was damaged
The Mermaid Monument on the Vistula boulevards was unveiled by President Stefan Starzyński, who initiated the creation of the sculpture, 85 years ago, in June 1939. The author of the monument is Ludwika Nitschowa.
A student of ethnography at the University of Warsaw posed for the head and body of Nitschowa's mermaid Krystyna Krahelskawho soon died in the Warsaw Uprising. Nitschowa described Krahelska as “a tall, well-built, strong girl with a Slavic, or rather Polish, type of beauty.” Krahelska posed in a kneeling position, holding a sword in her right hand. She was 23 years old when she posed for the monument.
The sculpture began to be associated with Krahelska after the war, when Nitschowa revealed her name in one of her interviews.
During the German occupation, neither of Warsaw's two Mermaid monuments (the other one currently stands in the Old Town Square) was included on the list of monuments intended for demolition. They were also not destroyed after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising. This probably happened because both were on the Vistula River, which had been the front line since September 1944. However, the monument with Krystyna Krahelska's face was damaged. In 1949, the Łopieński Brothers' workshop, without removing the sculpture from the plinth, patched 35 small bullet holes in the Syrena.
Main photo source: Artur Węgrzynowicz/tvnwarszawa.pl