SEIDEL1896-001 - ethnographic attestation
Ratzebuhr Schwirrholz survival
Poland - Ratzebuhr - Kreis Neustettin - Hinterpommern - modern Okonek - Central Europe
Play / practical
Source term: Schwirrholz
Schwirrholz: generic German bullroarer term; no separate local name is recorded
Long after antiquarians had begun filing the Schwirrholz away as a relic, it was still being swung at Ratzebuhr — today's Okonek in Poland — in 1896. A simple plaything, Seidel called it, in boys' hands there as across Pomerania and Rügen, where children not yet of school age already knew how to handle one.
in Ratzebuhr noch heute im Gebrauch
still in use today at Ratzebuhr
Seidel 1896:340
- Object
- Seidel identifies the locality's object as the same simple Schwirrholz discussed after Figura's mechanically explicit Galician report; he gives no separate Ratzebuhr dimensions or attachment details.
- Function
- A boys' plaything — 'dies einfache Spielgerät,' Seidel calls it, still in use at Ratzebuhr and its surroundings in 1896; on Rügen boys not yet of school age already knew how to swing one.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Modern Okonek town anchor for historical Ratzebuhr; no exact use site is recorded.
- Source location
- printed p. 340
- Toy / secular survival