Featured Amber Bear Amulet is 3500 Years Old

This rolled across my twitter feed this morning

The amber bear amulet was found in 1887 in a peat bog near Slupsk,Poland. When the figure was examined it turned out to be the amulet of a bear hunter, originating from the Neolithic period. It was dated at between 1700 B.C. and 650 B.C.

https://museum-of-artifacts.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-amber-bear-amulet-3500-years-old.html

 

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.

 

" Until 1945 the ‘amber bear of happiness‘ was on display at a museum in Szczecin until it “mysteriously disappeared”….

The bear resurfaced in 2002 when the Historic Museum in Straslund, Germany presented the amber bear to the public. It is not known how the museum came into possession of the prized amulet… You can read more about the story here."

http://twistedsifter.com/2014/04/3000-year-old-bear-amulet-the-original-gummy-bear/

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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


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.

 

This "bear of happiness" gets around!

 

Now I want a copy, of course.

 

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

 

Me Too!

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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?