The Bullroarer Atlas

No. SEIDEL1896-002

Gützlafshagen children's Schwirrholz

Germany · Gut Gutzlafshagen · modern Gutzlaffshagen near Garz · Rugen · Central Europe

Play / practical

A wooden board wound with cord at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A cord-wound wooden board, Pitt Rivers Museum. Image source
Seidel’s German journal page on the Schwirrholz in Hinterpommern and Rügen; its left column records young boys using it at Gützlafshagen.
Plate II. The same page records very young boys using the Schwirrholz at Gut Gützlafshagen on Rügen. Public domain · Image source

Source term: Schwirrholz

Schwirrholz: generic German bullroarer term; no separate local name is recorded

At Gut Gützlafshagen, near Garz on Rügen, the old whirling toy had passed into the island's youngest hands. Word of it reached H. Seidel in Berlin in 1896, after Franz Figura's report of the Schwirrholz in distant Galicia set him asking around, and answers came in from across Prussia: from Ratzebuhr in Pomerania, where it was still in use, and from the Warthe, Stettin and the Elbe, where it was said to survive.

Schon kleine, noch nicht schulpflichtige Knaben wußten dort mit diesem Spielzeug umzugehen.

Even little boys, not yet of school age, knew how to handle this toy there.

Seidel 1896:340

Particulars

Object
The whirled wooden toy Seidel calls the Schwirrholz.
Function
A boys' toy.

Source

H. Seidel, 'Das Schwirrholz in Hinterpommern und Rügen', Globus 70 (1896), p. 340

View the source

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.