Elizabeth von Arnim Bench in Dobra

The Elizabeth von Arnim Bench stands in front of the municipal office in Dobra, in Police County. It is a monument to the writer who lived in Rzędziny near Szczecin in 1896-1908 and described life there in her first book.

Who Elizabeth von Arnim was

She was born in 1866 in Australia as Mary Annette Beauchamp and was brought up in England. After her marriage to Count Henning von Arnim she lived from 1896 in Rzędziny, then Nassenheide, her husband's family estate. She described life there in the book “Elizabeth and her German Garden”, published in 1898, and its Polish edition appeared in 2011 as “Elizabeth i jej ogród”. The children in Rzędziny were taught by the later writers Edward Morgan Forster and Hugh Walpole. In 1908 the writer left for London for good.

The bench

The monument was unveiled on 29 September 2016, on the 150th anniversary of the writer's birth. Its author is Bohdan Ronin-Walknowski, and it was made with the support of the Danish Oticon Foundation. The sculpture shows Elizabeth von Arnim sitting on a bench with an open book in her hands, and on the back there is a plaque with a quotation from her book. The model was old photographs of the writer reading on a bench in front of the palace in Rzędziny.

Practical information

• Location: in front of the seat of the municipal office in Dobra. Next to it stands the Church of Our Lady Queen of the World.
• The monument stands outdoors and can be seen at any time.