Readers of books on the history of zoos are looking for different things. Some want a social history of a zoo and its place in the society of the day; some an account of the zoo in terms of its purpose at the time, i.e. the display of animals for education and/or entertainment and its breeding record; others an account of a zoo’s internal workings, architecture, policies and politics while others delight in a lighter story of individual animals and their relations with their keepers. This book falls firmly into the former camp. I can understand why that is the case because Berlin Zoo has a very dark history. It did not just exist during the Nazi regime—it was part of that regime and nearly completely destroyed as part of that regime.
The author has brought to bear his obviously great knowledge of the modern history of Germany on what is a thorough study of the history of Berlin Zoo and of how it came to have iconic rôle in the social life of the city. What makes the book even more remarkable is that the author ‘was not permitted to view documents held by Berlin Zoo’. I found that statement hard to take in, indeed I had to read the whole sentence twice. A respected academic historian of Germany was not given access to the Zoo’s archives is to me unfathomable and unforgivable. However, it becomes clear at the heart of this book that there has been an unwillingness to face up to what happened to the Zoo under the Nazi regime and the foul people involved in its running, including Lutz Heck, its Director. The emergence of their particular brand of eugenics, which ignored environment as a determinant of phenotype, is covered, if not in those terms.
The truth about Lutz Heck (1892-1983)† was slow to emerge. In the 1960s, magazine articles describing his efforts to breed back the aurochs and wild horse by crossing domestic breeds with ‘primitive’ features made no mention of his past in the Nazi party or of his political responsibilities for nature, conservation and hunting in the conquered lebensraum to the east of Germany. Much has been made of his regime-supported but actually rather pathetic efforts to recreate for Germany the great wild beasts that occupied its original grasslands and forests. Heck’s efforts to educate and enthuse the young about the natural world, a trait common at the apex of the Nazi hierarchy, just goes to demonstrate that an interest in animals, their conservation, their protection and even bunny-hugging sentimentality—as well as a compulsion to control the lives of other people—can pop up right along the political spectrum from the loony left to the idiotic right.
Bruce also describes, at length, the displays, not confined to Berlin, of human natives of other parts of the world in regular exhibitions at the Zoo. These ethnographic shows brought in the crowds and the money (the Zoo was often short of money in the financial turmoil of the inter-war years) but there was no evidence that they were staged or visited because of any special feelings of racial superiority at the time. Curiosity about how other people lived seemed to be the motivation of the visitors, a curiosity satisfied in the 21st Century by well-paid-for in-situ demonstrations of traditional dancing, singing and village life to the passengers of visiting cruise ships from Shetland to Samoa.
There are parts of the book I did not find convincing. It seems impossible to escape the views of Harriet Ritvo in books about zoos written by professional historians. Her book, The Animal Estate, published in 1987 has been highly influential but I must say I disagreed then with much that she had written and I disagree with it now. In the early years, Berlin, along with other German zoos, was playing catch-up, particularly with London. Bruce falls into line with Ritvo in equating London Zoo’s history with its wish to display imperial superiority. This is not the place to argue the contrary but it is worth pointing out that the British Empire provided a network through which animals could be obtained. But London Zoo was obtaining animals from all parts of the world; the Empire had no monopoly on ‘new and curious objects of the animal kingdom’, just a whole lot of people riding the crest of the wave of interest in natural history that swept through Victorian Britain. It is also worth noting that the architecture of early- and mid-Victorian London Zoo was hardly imperial; modified domestic and garden buildings best describes the animal housing*.
A bonus to the book is the inclusion of the zoo built in East Berlin during the 1950s as a paean to the delights of communism.
It is difficult to criticise a book that has involved so much research across the whole history of Germany and Berlin. But I do object to some of the terminology, in particular the use of ‘euthanization’. Animals were killed. Full stop.
In conclusion I think this book will satisfy those involved in ‘human-animal studies’ but leave those seeking information on Berlin Zoo as a zoo wanting much more. Still to be answered are such questions as: how innovative and influential has Berlin been in advancing wild animal husbandry? How did the senior staff of Berlin Zoo, drawn, like Lutz Heck, from the descriptive academic zoology of the day, learn how to cope with the requirements of living animals—an entirely different sphere of activity?
†Not to be confused with his brother Heinz Heck (1894-1982), Director of Munich Zoo, who, as Bruce relates, did not join the Nazi party. He used one of the Zoo’s elephants to clear an overturned tram car left by the retreating Wehrmacht to slow the advance of American troops in 1945.
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