Banzkower potato stone mouse
📍 Banzkow
The Banzkow potato mouse from Stein has been welcoming guests from near and far to the village square since 2000. The mouse is originally dressed for special occasions in village life. It stands in the middle of several boulders typical of the region, which bear the medals won in regional, national and European competitions.
The potato mouse was "born" as a permanent mascot for the 700th anniversary celebrations of the municipality of Banzkow in 2000. Today it is available as a small souvenir, as a large wooden mouse from a Lewit oak tree in the Mirow district, as a stone mouse on the Banzkow village square and as a living original with an identity card as resident no. 2235. The stone mouse is made up of granite stones that "migrated" from Finland to this area 1.89 billion years ago during the Ice Age. The individual body parts were found like this and have therefore hardly been worked on. The public baptism of the stone mouse with sturgeon water took place in 2005. To mark the occasion, a schoolgirl wrote "The Fairy Tale of the Potato Mouse", which was printed with pupils' drawings from a competition. The living potato mouse is present at all the highlights of the municipality and the office. She is also in great demand and popular as an ambassador for the region in her rustic, mobile, thatched cottage. She has already been a guest in over 20 European countries and at many trade fairs to promote Lewitz and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In 2014, for example, she visited all the twin towns of the state capital Schwerin, the partner regions of the state of MV and the partner municipality of Banzkow on a trip around the Baltic Sea. This trip not only served to revitalize partnership relations and tourism, but above all to promote the idea of friendship in Europe. The information board next to the stone mouse provides information about interesting excursion destinations in and around Banzkow, as well as in the entire Lewitz nature reserve.