Carl Hagenbeck

Carl Gottfried Wilhelm Heinrich Hagenbeck ( born June 10, 1844 in Hamburg, † April 14, 1913 ) was a German animal dealer, Völkerschau organizer and director of the zoo. He revolutionized and influenced the zoo architecture world by the invention naturalistic outdoor enclosure.

Life

His father, the fishmonger Gottfried Claes Carl Hagenbeck (1810-1887), began in 1848 in Hamburg, one associated with animal shows pet trade, the Carl Hagenbeck in 1866 and took over goal for the largest business of its kind in Germany. At first he sent four to five expeditions per year to Africa to animal trapping, and later in the whole world. He also gave to the whole world, in the menageries of emperors and other rulers.

1875 opened Carl Hagenbeck's first peoples exhibition based on an idea of his friend, animal painter Heinrich Leutemann ( 1824-1905 ). During the stay in Hagenbeck's exhibition area, visitors could watch the Laplanders in their everyday life. Hagenbeck's show enjoyed great success. The small Lappländerschau emigrated from Hamburg to Berlin. Then she traveled to Leipzig. To solve the exhibitions from the environment of sideshows and entertainment venues, they tried to find from now on reputable venues, so the shows were well respected by the bourgeoisie. After the unexpected success of the first Völkerschau Carl Hagenbeck planned this more quickly. Through its links with animal scavengers around the world, he brought three 1876 " Nubian " to Europe and immediately after an Inuit family in Greenland. 1883 and 1884 he held a Kalmyks and a Sinhalese or Ceylonschau. With the opening of its zoos in Stellingen 1908 near Hamburg Hagenbeck was a private exhibition area available where Somalis, Ethiopians and Bedouins occurred.

Hagenbeck opened a circus in 1887 by Carl Hagenbeck Circus and Sinhalese International Caravan, which has acted later than Hagenbeck 's Zoological Circus. In 1890 he introduced the dressage tame wild animals and planned an open zoo without bars, to which it acquired in 1896 a patent. In the same year he joined with his animal circus on the Berlin Trade Fair, where he presented polar bears, seals and various birds in front of a 60 -meter deep and 25 meter wide panorama Arctic Ocean. The circus was built in 1905 after the acquisition by an American circus Circus Hagenbeck - Wallace. Carl's younger brother Wilhelm Hagenbeck (1850-1910) also ran a circus, the later of William sons Willy (1884-1965) and Carl (1888-1949) was continued.

On May 5, 1907 Hagenbeck opened in Stellingen, north of Hamburg, on the basis of his patent the first gridless zoo in the world, which still exists today as Hagenbeck Zoo. This foundation was in competition with the still existing until 1930 zoo in Hamburg and from 1909 was boycotted by a majority of the German Zoological Gardens, which competing animal dealers, such as the descendants of Ludwig rest benefited. 1911 Hagenbeck was together with the former crowd favorite, the walrus Pallas, portrayed in behalf of the Hamburger Kunsthalle of the painter Lovis Corinth, the resulting image portrait of Carl Hagenbeck with the Walrus Pallas is still part of the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Carl Hagenbeck was buried in Hamburg at the cemetery Ohlsdorf. On his grave is lying asleep in front of a boulder with the name Carl Heinrich and Lorenz Hagenbeck, the bronze lion Trieste, the favorite animal of Carl Hagenbeck. The lion had once saved his life, as Hagenbeck had been tripped in the outdoor enclosure and attacked by a tiger. The sculpture was created by Josef Franz Pallenberg, the artist who designed the sculptures of animals to the front gate of the zoo. In the first days of January 2014, the bronze lion was stolen.

On 5 May 1994, the German Federal Post Office issued a special issue block to his 150th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the Berlin Zoo.

Criticism

Since 1870 decreased interest in zoos slowly, Hagenbeck took up the idea of his friend, the painter Heinrich people man and let accompany animals from the far north of seeds. Since many onlookers homed to the "strangers" to see Hagenbeck produced until 1913, 54 such exhibitions in which large groups of people from the traditional animal fishing areas - issued - mostly from Africa and Southeast Asia. Commercially, the Völkerschauen were extremely successful. In no relation to the small rewards of the sitter, who were often recruited with false promises were. Black Africans who were referred to as " semi- civilized" and exhibited in human zoos, learned a conspicuously again significantly worse treatment than African Americans in imperial Germany, for example, occurred as a musician. The medical care was poor: An Inuit villagers died of smallpox, because you had forgotten to vaccinate them.

At the time of Völkerschauen many "foreign" people were in Germany and Europe think that one is entitled to issue in zoos, as Hagenbeck did it on a large scale. The exhibitions were organized so that they corresponded to the stereotypical perception of the exhibited "peoples" by the white Europeans and they confirmed. The related advertising media pursued the purpose of illustrating the " superiority " of Europeans towards the exhibited cultures and linguistically. The Völkerschauen was awarded often a scientific painting; subsequently Hagenbeck was awarded an honorary membership of an anthropological society.

The Völkerschauen occurred with the claim to represent the lives of the peoples represented "authentic" to. During visiting hours, the sitter had to perform dances and rituals that were removed in the Flaunt However, its context in the cultures of the sitter. In fact, the Völkerschauen mediated a exotistisches image that exerted a decisive influence on the European perception of the stranger. Therefore, some critics Hagenbeck and Völkerschauen represent the view Völkerschauen had pursued the purpose to take the German population for colonialism. The contents of the published in hundreds of thousands of copies accompanying publication Carl Hagenbeck 's illustrated animal and human world were associated with the spread in Germany after the loss of the colonies colonial revisionism. Balthasar Staehelin writes, however: " The colonial aspect of Völkerschauen in the Zoological Gardens occurs less in an open propaganda for colonialism -a-days, but manifests itself associative, and without reflection in the formation of a mode of thinking that zoos and non-European people linked. "

The Critical Whiteness Studies, sees the ethnic shows, organized by Hagenbeck and other entrepreneurs, especially a more powerful example of racist practice in Germany the imperial period.

Publications

  • Of animals and humans. Adventures and experiences. 1908 ( digitized output of 1909); Re: List, Leipzig 1952.
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