Bamberg Girl's Fountain

The drinking fountain with a girl wearing typical Bamberg clothes was inaugurated in 1915. It was originally located in the Old Market Square, in front of the merchants houses across from Woźna Street. Its stone plinth was designed by the Poznań Stahl, and the girl cast in bronze was made by the sculptor Józef Wackerle, who used a Bamberg girl from the Goldenring barroom (Józefa Gadymska from Winiary) as his model. It represents a woman in typical Bamberg clothes carrying two wine vats on a pole across her shoulders. The water from the fountain cistern, with two streams trickling into it, was drunk mostly by horses, but it was used by people as well. The fountain had also two smaller vessels with water for dogs to drink from and a plaque with the name of its founder, the Poznań wine merchant Leopold Goldenring.
In 1929 the municipal authorities decided to move the drinking fountain to the western wall of the old town hall building. After WWII, the Bamberg girl was stored away and did not return to the Old Market until 1977; it was put back close to where it had stood before the war. In 1998 it was by the Bamberg fountain that the German chancellor Helmut Kohl met with the Poznań Bamberg people.

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