War Zone Zoo: The Berlin Zoo and World War 2

[Harro]

http://www.amazon.com/War-Zone-Zoo-Berl ... 98035278X/

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[Annelie]

Thankyou...just ordered.

Interested!

Hope its non fiction hard to say from just the one page. Fiction stories not interested in.

[Harro]

Certainly no fiction!

[J. Duncan]

Interesting topic for sure of a little known aspect of war and it effects on infrastructure. That is quite a death toll of animals. Sad. Thanks for posting this.

[KevinP]

Thanks for mentioning my book, Harro!

I thought it might be interesting to publish 2 chapters from my book.

4 From one crisis into the next

In 1913, one year before the European super powers plunged into a destructive war second to none, the aquarium building was opened in the Berlin zoo. It replaced the old one that had been on the Unter den Linden from 1869 to 1910. The new building contained 50 fresh and salt water pools, large and small; a collection of insects and terrariums housing Comodo dragons and crocodiles. As import of tropical salt water was not possible during World War One owing to logistical limitations, it was produced artificially by adding the necessary salts and minerals to fresh water. Elsewhere in the zoo, the war caused limitations as well, especially the supply of animal foodstuffs. Yet the zoo remained open to the public throughout the entire war.

The end of the war in 1918 ushered in a period of economic and political instability in Germany. The repair payments, imposed on Germany by the victors, brought the country to the rim of the abyss. Large segments of the population had to cope with poverty and malnutrition. Nonetheless, Berliners showed compassion with the animals in the zoo and relinquished their remaining foodstuffs to the animals in the cold winters. Rocketing costs as a result of the inflation and a decrease of income triggered severe financial problems for the zoo. Loans by the Prussian state could not prevent the zoo from being closed down from October 1, 1922 to March 30, 1923 because of financial problems. In part due to the introduction of the Rentenmark in November 1923, intended to put a stop to the hyperinflation, the zoo managed to restore its financial position. During the remainder of the 20s, known as the Golden Twenties because of the economic uprising, the zoo found itself in calmer waters again.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 in New York was the beginning of a global economic crisis which hit Germany extremely hard, as she was still recuperating from the previous depression and it resulted in massive unemployment and other mishaps. During this crisis however, the zoo did not have to close its gates. While in the meantime many impoverished and unhappy Germans turned to the National Socialist Party of Adolf Hitler, a new scientific director was appointed on January 1, 1932. This Dr. Lutz Heck succeeded his father, Professor Ludwig Heck who had held this position since 1888. Lutz Heck, born on April 23, 1882 had been born and raised in the zoo. Managing a zoo was second nature to him and the zoologist had been employed as deputy director since 1923. His brother, biologist Heinz Heck and manager of the Hellabrun Zoo in Munich was no stranger in the field international field of zoos either.

The Heck brothers earned fame with their reverse breeding programs, set up at the end of the 20s and intended to make the extinct aurochs and the primordial horse – the tarpan – return to German natural areas. They did this by setting up breeding programs with animals of domesticated species, especially selected for their primitive characteristics such as a coarse build. The Schorf Moor northeast of Berlin and the Rominter Moor in eastern Prussia were stocked with this so-called primordial cattle. Today the Heck cattle, named after the brothers, still roams natural areas in Germany and elsewhere but as a race, it does not even come close to the aurochs. Genetically speaking, this reverse breeding of primordial animals had no scientific base in fact. During the Nazi era though, it matched the Blut-und-Boden (blood and soil) ideology of the Nazis: the desire to establish a free and unblemished Germanic rural community in the East. Just like Arians were to return to their rural origins, so cattle should return to its original form.

5 The zoo turns brown

Following Adolf Hitler’s appointment to Reichskanzler (chancellor) in January 1933 and the Nazi reign of terror was taking shape, apparently nothing seemed to change in the zoo. The zoo remained the cultural and social center it had been in the 20s and early 30s. Apart from the sizable amount of animals – 2,519 birds of 926 species and 1,196 mammals of 385 species – drawing large crowds, the terraces, pubs, music pavilions and party halls became a popular meeting place for the Ber-lin community. The elegant zoo restaurant, equipped with ball rooms and conference halls could seat almost 8,000 persons. The innovative policy of father and son Heck to house animals in cages without bars and in herds as much as possible was universally appreciated. Engineers of the Wehrmacht assisted in laying out a “lion steppe” where the big cats had sufficient room to move around. The mountainous terrain for animals from the Alps was decked out with edelweiss and rip-pling brooklets with trout swimming in them.

Heck’s showpiece however was the Deutsche Zoo (German), a section opened in 1935 housing indigenous animals such as bears, wolves, birds of prey and bea-vers. A Lower-Saxony farmhouse on the premises re-kindled ancient times and matched the National Social-ist glorification of the Germanic rural community. To emphasize the bonds with the new regime, swastikas would have appeared on the fences of the new attrac-tion. The close ties between the Heck dynasty and the Nazis was public knowledge. Heck senior praised Na-zism in various publications and called the Blut-und-Boden ideology the most important achievement of National Socialism. Hitler awarded the popular zoo manager the Goethe medal for arts and science, Germa-ny’s highest cultural decoration, in 1940 on occasion of the latter’s 80th birthday. Son Lutz followed in his fa-ther’s footsteps; not only in business but also in politics. In June 1933 he joined the SS as supporting member and he joined the N.S.D.A.P. in 1937. On occasion of Hitler’s birthday, April 20, the zoologist was appointed professor.

The close ties between zoo manager Lutz Heck and the Nazi regime was particularly apparent in his relation-ship with Hermann Göring, second to Hitler within the Nazi leadership for a long time. The two men shared a passion for hunting and Lutz was a welcome guest in the hunting lodge of the Reichsmarschall. The obese Nazi big shot earned most of his reputation as chairman of the Reichstag (German government), head of the Four Year Plan, Secretary of Aviation and commander of the Luftwaffe but his many side functions included Reichsforstmeister (chief of forests), Reichsjägermeis-ter (chief of hunting) and overall responsible for nature conservation. Until he had to shift his priorities because of the war, Göring showed great compassion for nature in the German state: he had breeding programs set up for indigenous species of animals facing extinction, he tightened hunting laws and designated new nature preservation areas.

Lutz Heck, co-responsible for nature policy, had been named chief of the Oberste Naturschütz Behörde im Reichsforstamt (highest nature preservation agency in the state department of forestry) by his friend Göring in the summer of 1938 and in this capacity he was the senior responsible person for the entire nature man-agement. Although he would play down his relationship with Göring after the war, he did dedicate his book enti-tled “Der Deutsche Edelhirsch” (red deer) to the Reichsmarschall in 1935. Heck also traveled to Göring’s country estate Carinhall on the Schorf Moor in order to pick up the lion cubs the eccentric Nazi kept as pets which were getting too large and transfer them to the zoo where they were given a new shelter. Prior to the outbreak of war, Heck traveled to Canada at Göring’s request in order to select a number of bison to use in a reverse breeding program intended to make the wisent, facing extinction, return to the Schorf Moor.

With a director at the helm who sympathized and co-operated with the Nazi regime, it was a foregone con-clusion the zoo would turn brown. The first measures to equalize (gleichschalten) or adapt the zoo to the prevalent norms and values of the Nazi regime, were invisible to the public though and only applied to Jewish members of the Supervisory Council and Jewish stock-holders.