A historic discovery: the seca Pelikan baby scale

The finder and today’s owner of the scale, Mrs Stanska, followed its historic traces and learned how her family came into the scale’s possession: Before World War II, Stanska’s grandparents lived in Warsaw. During the Warsaw uprising in 1944, they lost all their property due to a bomb attack that destroyed their house. After the end of the war, her family had to start an entirely new life. As it turned out, her grandfather found work in the Polish town of Toruń (German: Thorn) and left Warsaw with his family.

In Toruń, a house was assigned to her family in which a German family had previously resided during the war. Aside from some pieces of furniture, there was also the seca Pelikan, which from this point was passed onto her grandparents.

At the end of the 1950s, her family had to move again because her grandfather had taken on a new job in Poznań (German: Posen). There the Odyssey came to an end and the family settled in the city permanently. Once in Posen, the seca Pelikan baby scale was regularly used in the following years and served many generations. As a baby, Mrs Stanska herself was regularly weighed with the seca Pelikan scale too.

However, the scale was not only used by her own family – it also helped measure the growth of the neighborhood children in the whole area. After Mrs Stanska and the children next door had outgrown toddler age, the scale was stored in the cellar and forgotten for many years. Only recently was the scale accidentally rediscovered and its history came to light. Although the scale has now become a valuable part of the family’s history, Mrs Stanska would like to donate the scale to the University Clinic in Poznań, where it can be admired in the Museum of Medicine in the near future. The modern successor of this historical baby scale can be found in our Online shop.