The pedestal of the Warsaw Mermaid monument on the Vistula boulevards was painted with black paint. “Against all empires,” the inscription reads. The police are looking for the perpetrator or perpetrators.
On the night from Saturday to Sunday, someone placed an inscription on the Warsaw mermaid 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 said that the incident took place on Sunday around 4 a.m. – We can talk about two people here, one of whom painted the monument's pedestal with black paint – said Rafał Rutkowski from the press team of the Warsaw Police Headquarters on Sunday.
Black inscription on the Mermaid monumentArtur Węgrzynowicz/tvnwarszawa.pl
Inspection underway
The police carried out an inspection, secured evidence, identified witnesses of the incident and conducted activities aimed at identifying the perpetrator.
– The inspection was carried out by a crime scene technician. On Monday, the inspection will be carried out by a conservator. At the moment, we do not have any official notification from the conservator – said on Monday around 10.30 a.m., junior asp. Jakub Pacyniak from the Warsaw I District Police Headquarters.
Not the first time
The Mermaid Monument had already been destroyed. March 8 climate activists from the Last Generation group poured orange paint on him. 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 Syrena.
The act of vandalism was condemned by, among others, Mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski and Minister of Culture Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz.
The case of throwing paint on the Mermaid monument on the Vistula River was brought to the prosecutor's office. They are conducted by the Warsaw-Śródmieście Północ District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw. The proceedings concern damage to a monument, i.e. an act under Article 108, paragraph 1 of the Act on the protection and care of monuments.
In July, the Mermaid Monument has been pre-cleaned. The work included a sculpture and part of the sandstone. They cost five thousand zlotys.
The monument was unveiled by President Starzyński
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, and the sculpture has the face of Krystyna Krahelska, who soon died in the Warsaw Uprising. She was 23 years old when she posed for the monument.
To work on the sculpture, Starzyński made available to the sculptor the hall of a closed boiler room on the premises of the Filter Station Complex at ul. Koszykowa 81. The management of the Filter Station also assigned two manual workers to help her.
To work on the head and body of Nitschowa's mermaid Krystyna Krahelska, a student of ethnography at the University of Warsaw, posed. 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. However, the Mermaid's face is not her own, and the sculpture began to be associated with Krahelska after the war, when Nitschowa revealed her name in one of her interviews.
Both Sirens survived the war
The sculpture shows a figure with a raised sword and shield. Her hair is gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her gaze is directed north, and her feminine body is protected by a round, slightly convex shield held in her left hand. On the shield there is an image of an eagle with a crown, around which the inscription Warsaw runs. The author of the plinth consisting of three sandstone blocks placed in the pool was Stanisław Pomian-Połujan.
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.
The Warsaw Mermaid Monument was covered with yellow paintArtur Węgrzynowicz/tvnwarszawa.pl
Main photo source: Artur Węgrzynowicz/tvnwarszawa.pl