Savages and Beasts

The Birth of the Modern Zoo

Nigel Rothfels

Publication Year: 2002

To modern sensibilities, nineteenth-century zoos often seem to be unnatural places where animals led miserable lives in cramped, wrought-iron cages. Today zoo animals, in at least the better zoos, wander in open spaces that resemble natural habitats and are enclosed, not by bars, but by moats, cliffs, and other landscape features. In Savages and Beasts, Nigel Rothfels traces the origins of the modern zoo to the efforts of the German animal entrepreneur Carl Hagenbeck. By the late nineteenth century, Hagenbeck had emerged as the world's undisputed leader in the capture and transport of exotic animals. His business included procuring and exhibiting indigenous peoples in highly profitable spectacles throughout Europe and training exotic animals—humanely, Hagenbeck advertised—for circuses around the world. When in 1907 the Hagenbeck Animal Park opened in a village near Hamburg, Germany, Hagenbeck brought together all his business interests in a revolutionary zoological park. He moved wild animals out of their cages and into "natural landscapes" alongside "primitive" peoples from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the islands of the Pacific. Hagenbeck had invented a new way of imagining captivity: the animals and people on exhibit appeared to be living in the wilds of their native lands. By looking at Hagenbeck's multiple enterprises, Savages and Beasts demonstrates how seemingly enlightened ideas about the role of zoos and the nature of animal captivity developed within the essentially tawdry business of placing exotic creatures on public display. Rothfels provides both fascinating reading and much-needed historical perspective on the nature of our relationship with the animal kingdom.

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Contents
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Book Details

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pp. vii-

List of Illustrations

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pp. ix-x

Acknowledgments

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pp. xi-xii

I am especially indebted to Friedrich and Irmgard Andrae of Hamburg/Volksdorf, who provided me with a loving and welcoming home in Germany when I needed it desperately, and to Donald Fleming, who, as a dissertation advisor and as a friend, has shepherded this project along from its very earliest beginnings. Without their simply vital encouragement and support, not even the research for this book would...

Introduction: Entering the Gates

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pp. 1-12

In a slim book entitled Beobachtungen �ber die Psyche der Menschenaffen (Observations on the psyche of the great apes), published in 1908, the German zoologist Alexander Sokolowsky attempted to describe the psychological, intellectual, and emotional lives of gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. Convinced that the different anthropoid species...

Chapter 1: Gardens of History

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pp. 13-43

Centuries before the firm of Carl Hagenbeck came to dominate the trade and representation of exotic animals, unusual animals had been exhibited in major cities around the world. In order to understand the importance of Hagenbeck and his innovations, we must first look back at the...

Chapter 2: Catching Animals

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pp. 44-80

One of the most remarkable stories about the firm of Carl Hagenbeck—one to which we will return throughout the rest of this book—is Franz Kafka’s 1917 “A Report to an Academy.” In this short story, Kafka explores themes of captivity, freedom, and art through the voice of a “civilized ape.” The story is written as an address by the ape, Red...

Chapter 3: “Fabulous Animals”: Showing People

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pp. 81-142

Although the name Hagenbeck first became known among animal catchers, buyers, and other dealers, the name soon spread into the popular imagination of people around the world who flocked to see the results of his catches—the exotic animals and, initially more famous, the exotic peoples brought for exhibit in Europe. Indeed, despite the fact...

Chapter 4: Paradise

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pp. 143-188

What made Hagenbeck’s people shows such a success was their claim that they presented “exotic” people as they really were. In the construction of the often highly elaborate sets for these shows, for example, the company diligently sought to construct a convincingly realistic environment that would establish the authenticity of the exhibit. The...

Conclusion: When Animals Speak

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pp. 189-206

The story of Red Peter in Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy” is central to this book. Like most works in the animal story tradition, from Aesop’s fables and Apuleius’s Golden Ass to more modern stories by Swift and Orwell, “A Report to an Academy” is both about humans and about animals,...

Notes

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pp. 207-249

A Note on Sources

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pp. 251-259

In the library of the Milwaukee County Zoo, amid shelves and cabinets filled with scientific journals and the publications of other zoological gardens, there is one shelf with a few older-looking books. One of the volumes is Elisabeth Schulz’s Afrikanische Nächte: Erzählung (Hamburg: Zoo Verlag [Christoph Schulz], 1926), her semifictional account of her adventures catching animals with her husband, Christoph, in German East Africa before...

Index

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pp. 261-268

E-ISBN-13: 9780801898099
E-ISBN-10: 0801898099
Print-ISBN-13: 9780801889752
Print-ISBN-10: 0801889758

Page Count: 288
Illustrations: 51 halftones, 1 line drawing
Publication Year: 2002

Series Title: Animals, History, Culture
Series Editor Byline: Harriet Ritvo, Series Editor