Schloss Britz - Milkmaid

Milkmaid

The park contains a bronze copy of a neo-classical sculpture made by Pavel Sokolov which he created originally in 1816 for the park of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, near Saint Petersburg. It is called The Milkmaid. The copy was donated in 1998 to Schloss Britz celebrating the anniversary of ten years of partnership between the Kulturstiftung Schloss Britz and the State Museums of Tsarskoye Selo. The sculpture depicts a crying girl with a broken milk jug, from the French fable Le pot à lait (The Milk Pan) from the 17th century writer Jean de La Fontaine. This fable was transferred into a German version Die Milchfrau (The Milkmaid) by the author Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim in the 18th century.

The fable reflects upon the futility of daydreams without recognizing reality or the facts. A milkmaid was on the way to the market with a jug full of milk and was making great plans for the money she would earn for the milk. Lost in her daydreams of future pleasures and fortunes, she missed a step and dropped the pot, which cracked on the ground and all the milk and future plans were spilled, leaving her with nothing but sadness. In Germany this has become a common saying, known as the Milchmädchenrechnung meaning one who daydreams naïvely and forms false conclusions.