P. T. Barnum

Phineas Taylor Barnum ( born July 5, 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut, † April 7, 1891 in Bridgeport, Connecticut ) was an American circus pioneer and politician.

Life

Barnum, son of an innkeeper and shop owner, began his apprenticeship in small retail shops in the state of Connecticut. Even as a young man, he led a small shop in his hometown, selling lottery tickets in several collection points and founded a newspaper. In 1834 he moved with his wife Charity and their young daughter Caroline to New York to seek his fortune. After Barnum initially found no fixed point, " acquired " it in 1835 which allegedly 161 years old nurse of George Washington, which he exhibited in New York. The blind and infirm elderly African American woman named Joyce Heth entertained the paying public with anecdotes of Washington's life and gospels and was Barnum's entry into the fairground attraction. Only after her death the following year came through an autopsy, where the enterprising Barnum is said to have earned well, out they could not have been more than 80 years old. In the following years he hoofed it with various circuses across the eastern and southern United States.

Career as a showman

Barnum took over in 1841, the American Museum in New York and developed it into one of the largest entertainment spectacle of the 19th century. In addition to the exhibitions, which represented a large collection of everything somehow could be interesting, helped him, especially his talent for staging and aggressive public relations. Each new program item was heavily advertised with posters and in newspapers as a " sensation". These Barnum wrote articles and letters to the editor for various newspapers to make his exhibition repeatedly topic of conversation. Even before Bluffs, staged competitions and fraud he did not shrink. Thus, one of his employees spent as a doctor from London to propagate a "Fiji Mermaid". This consisted of the upper body of a monkey who was sent attached to a fish body, and in 1842 to the sensation in New York.

The cabinet of curiosities

Especially in such a skilled through PR campaigns was the American Museum, which was merged in the subsequent years with two other collections to a visitor magnet. In the 23 years under Barnum's management, it should have marveled at 38 million visitors.

The collection was a mix of cabinet of curiosities and ethnographic exhibition; However, there was in it does not even begin to attempt a scientific outline. Main inclusion criteria were the rarity of an exhibit and its dramatic value. These included, for example, in the early days of stuffed birds, exotic musical instruments, a collection of armor, the plaster bust of a " cannibal chief ," a model of the city of Paris, a model of Niagara Falls, vending machines, mechanical figures, mummies, skeletons, a dog that is a knitting machine operated, a python, an orangutan, a ventriloquist, a flea circus and a gypsy woman who read from his hand.

Human and animal shows

In addition to artists and performers, the circus was also famous for his actors, who distinguished themselves particularly by physical characteristics. BBW, " living skeletons ", albinos, Siamese twins, dwarfs, giants, " the link between man and apes ," men and women without head, arms or abdomen, the true Kaspar Hauser and other oddities. The procurement of the performers was there even more adventurous than suggested by their stories. Two " rediscovered Aztec children " actually came from a home for the mentally disabled and were then deported back there. The " link between man and ape " was also a mentally disabled black man, which it was contractually forbidden to reveal his true identity.

The " Giant of Cardiff "

1869 Barnum counted the first visitors of the site of the alleged giants of Cardiff in Cardiff ( New York), whose bones later turned out to be fake. With a duplicate henceforth he led the arriving tourists astray. After the announcement of the original hoax his exhibition to the actual Renner developed.

Traveling circus

Barnum tried to increase his reputation by organizing in 1851 with high financial risk in the form of a traveling menagerie a tour of the Swedish singer Jenny Lind by the United States. Lind, who had previously been largely unknown in the United States, was within a few weeks to a national event. The shops were filled with Jenny Lind hoods, scarves, gloves, dolls, combs, cakes, confectionery and similar souvenirs. Also, this was primarily Barnum's skillful advertising work was responsible. The tour was a huge success and lasted until 1852. Barnum was then a made man.

The American Museum in 1856 was the first time bankrupt: Barnum had speculated in real estate transactions. After the building in 1865 and 1868 burned down twice, he changed the business concept and set up again a mobile circus; in the decades before Barnum had already repeatedly organized traveling circuses and doing a lot of money. Jumbo, the king of the elephants, in 1882 purchased by Barnum for $ 10,000 from the London Zoo, brought him in the years 1882 to 1885 in a tour in the form of a traveling menagerie by the United States and Canada and a half million dollars.

1885 merged with the Barnum showman James A. Bailey Barnum and Bailey: The Greatest Show on Earth. The circus treated the exhibited animals as other exhibits; in the 1880s came Barnum in a protracted legal dispute with the U.S. ASPCA ASPCA.

In 1907, the company was acquired in reputable circus of the successful family clans Ringling Brothers.

Public commitment

Barnum was a member from 1865 to 1866 and from 1877 to 1879 the House of Representatives from Connecticut; besides, he was 1875-1876 Mayor of Bridgeport. He tried in 1867 to collect for the Republicans in Congress. But He failed at his candidates for the Democrats cousin William Henry Barnum, which could have been because of his reputation as a windy Wheeler. Not for nothing that he was "King Humbug " called, although Barnum himself had this nickname once missed. However, Barnum donated a lot of money for various research institutions, engaged in the struggle against slavery and against alcoholism. The Tufts College in Medford, Massachusetts, he founded the Barnum Museum of Natural History, where the stuffed Jumbo, Barnum's famous elephant tour, was set up and up to a fire in 1975 was an attraction.

Reception

In the notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson Barnum served as a symbol for everything that was in the U.S. are not in order. According to him, the Barnum effect is named in psychology.

Cy Coleman processed 1980, the Barnum's life in the Broadway musical Barnum.

Victor Klemperer in his treatise called LTI propaganda of the Third Reich as " Barnumiade ".

Writings

• King humbug. His life, told by himself. Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7466-1725-1