Mickiewicz Park

Tourist attractions

Description

Park of Adam Mickiewicz is one of the six most important and valuable organized green areas in Gubin. Its area of over half a hectare is located about 5 minutes on foot from the town hall square, between Dąbrowskiego and Słowackiego streets and the right tributary of the Nysa Lużycka, called Lubsza. The Park is characterized by a very rich range of species of trees, including ancient maples, oaks, lindens, larches, chestnuts, yews, thuja, elms, beeches, and wood trees. Due to its location and biodiversity, this park is a good example of pro-environmental, urban landscape architecture limiting the effect of heat islands in built-up areas. There are two monuments within the park:

Established in 1908 on the initiative of the City Beautification Society, the fountain with a round stone pedestal set in its central part decorated with four fish, on top of which there was a baroque sculpture "Boy with a Carp" from 1790 by the sculptor Meltzer from the Royal Academy in Berlin (Ger. Königliche Akademie in Berlin). A stone ball was placed on the site of the stolen or war-damaged sculpture.
An erratic boulder with a marble plaque from 1955, funded by the inhabitants of the Guben county, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the death of the Polish-Lithuanian poet of the Romantic era and the national hero Adam Mickiewicz.

Historical background

Before its development, the area of the present park was quite a vast marsh lowland (Ger.: Sumpfniederung), which in the 19th and 20th centuries were massively drained by the authorities of Royal Prussia and converted for utility purposes. Due to the rapid expansion of the city of Guben and the dynamically changing needs of the inhabitants, in 1873 the process of adapting this area to a city square was started. This is how the square of Wilhelm (Ger.: Wilhelmsplatz) was created, where you could admire the imposing sculpture of Kaiser Wilhelm. On the pedestal underneath it, information about 100 soldiers killed in the German French war in the years 1870-1871, who were part of the city battalion, was engraved. Another element of the project was a Russian cannon captured during the fights and set a few meters away from the sculpture itself.

At the initiative of the city councilor and honorary citizen of the city of Guben, Adolph Jackeschki, at the beginning of the 20th century, the aesthetic revalorization of the square was undertaken, and it was transformed into a purely park layout. On September 1, 1902, five years after the death of Jesckeschek, the city placed an erratic boulder in the newly created park in his honor, from the area of the then municipal forest, now the Dzikowo Forest District. The stone is decorated with a commemorative plaque.

In 1908, the Gubin Beautification Society moved to the park a sculpture of a Boy with a Carp from 1790 by the Berlin artist Meltzer, originally placed on the city well standing in front of the town hall and the parish church. The well was replaced by a much larger, majestic "Well of Two Emperors", which was destroyed during World War II. The Meltzer sculpture itself is set in a circular composition with a fountain, on a pedestal decorated with four fish.

After World War II, the Wilhelm sculpture was destroyed, and the Boy's sculpture disappeared - it is not entirely certain whether it was also damaged or stolen. The plaque on the erratic boulder dedicated to Adolph Jackeschki was changed in 1955 into a plaque commemorating Adam Mickiewicz. Since then, the park, apart from minor renovation of footbridges and reorganization of greenery, pleases the eye in an unchanged form.