True meteorological chronicles engraved in the rock, these stones, visible in times of great drought, recall periods of famine and suffering of the population.
These are the time capsules of an era that we would like to be over: the stones of hunger, scattered especially along the Elbe, a river that originates in the current Czech Republic before crossing Germany, reappear. There are nearly 25 of them, visible only when the water is very low, which served as a warning to future generations and as testimonies of past suffering during periods of drought and famine. These stones bear a few brief messages, the years of great scarcity and sometimes the initials of the people who engraved them.
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In 2013, a hunger stone discovered in Tetschen on the banks of the Elbe, was studied by a group of researchers. It includes some reminders of the consequences of the drought – bad harvests, high food prices and the poorest dying of hunger – as well as numerous dates, 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746, 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868 , 1892 and 1893. There is above all this inscription which, despite the heat wave sends shivers down your spine: “If you see me, then cry”… Another in Tichlowitz, in the Czech Republic announces: “We cried, we cry and you will cry”.
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Continuing this tradition, Greenpeace inscribed in 2018 on a stone in Magdeburg, Germany, its own sentence, more modern but equally disturbing, if not more so: “If you see me, it is a climate crisis. August 2018”. And as Dutch journalist Olaf Koens noted on Twitter, rarely have the hunger stones been so visible as in the summer of 2022:
Huivering weekend. Door de droogte in Europese rivieren komen er Hungersteine bovendrijven. Macabere waarschuwingen van onze 15e eeuwse voorouders over hongersnood.
‘Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine’https://t.co/kbo03caaZX pic.twitter.com/CMTcMvfQQp
—Olaf Koens (@obk) August 11, 2022