The "Mägdebrunnen" was recreated in 2003 on the site of a historic fountain by the German sculptor Günter Kaden. Its design details inspire(d) again and again to different interpretations.
Here, where Schillstraße flows into Fährstraße in the direction of the harbor, a well "am Schilde" stood for centuries to supply the surrounding population with water. It was the task of the maids to fetch the water from the well and carry it to the households of the patrician houses. The sculptor Günter Kaden took up this theme in an urban planning competition, won the competition with it and in 2003 designed the fountain from a granite block with a group of bronze figures. The bronze figures, which show three maids fetching water and whispering with each other, were quickly given the name "the chatty women" in the vernacular. This is how the fountain got the name "maids' fountain" - although this watering place was never given an official name by the sculptor himself.
The assumption that the maids at the fountain were whispering about a child murderer from Stralsund who was executed in 1765 also belongs to the realm of legends. A dramatic urban criminal case in the Swedish period, which (together with the case of a Frankfurt child murderess) served Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as a model for the character Gretchen in Faust.
