Melkow / Melkow in Wust-Fischbeck

The entry for this church in the Routen der Romanik in Berlin und Brandenburg [https://rrbb.info/westliche-route/dorfkirche-melkow/] [accessed 25 October 2023] reports a ca. 1250 Romanesque font basin on a later base in the nave ["Im Schiff steht ein wunderbar skulptierter spätromanischer Taufstein von 1250 auf einer Säule aus späterer Zeit"]. The entry in the geschichtstouren.de [https://geschichtstouren.de/strasse-der-romanik/nordroute/melkow-dorfkirche/] [accessed 25 October 2023] reports that this font was brought over in 1953 from another location where it has been used as a wash-tub and planter; the figures remaing on it pose questions, as they have been interpreted as knights by some, as pilgrims by others ["Ungefähr 50 Jahre nach der Kirche entstand der Taufstein. Allerdings wurde dieser nicht für diese Kirche hergestellt, sondern stand in einer anderen Kirche. Erst 1953 fand er hier seinen Platz, nachdem er als Waschzuber und Blumenkübel zweckentfremdet wurde. Die noch erhaltenen Figuren geben einige Rätsel auf. Manche halten Sie für Ritter, andere wieder für Pilger."] A photograph of the font in this church by Jörg Blobelt [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:19860718655NR_Melkow_(Wust-Fischbeck)_Dorfkirche.jpg] [accessed 25 October 2023] notes it as a replacement Romanesque font of ca. 1200 installed in this church in 1953; the font was probably from a nearby abandone church ["1953 wurde ein vermutlich aus einer aufgegebenen Kirche stammendes, romanisches Sandstein-Taufbecken (um 1200) aufgestellt"]; the original font of the medieval church of Melkow was probably lost or destroyed in the Thirty Years' War. Noted as a baptismal font made of sandstone ca. 1250 and illustrated in detail in Raymond Faure [http://www.raymond-faure.com/Strasse_der_Romanik/Melkow_Dorfkirche_Innenraum.html] [accessed 25 October 2023]. The badly damaged basin is polygonal, the [eight?] sides now plain; it retains three standing figures at the corners, and it is quite possible that it had eight originally, one at each corner; the three that remain stand facing outwards, all wearing knee-length garments, all different; their posture is also individualised. [NB: despite the claims of the sources [cf. supra] and the badly damaged remains, the style of the work does not appear Romanesque by rather late-medieval at the earliest].