The directory «Plots»

Hagenbeck Carl Gottfried Heinrich
(1844—1913)
«Beasts and Men»
«Von Tieren und Menschen»

Carl Hagenbeck was a merchant of wild animals who supplied many European zoos, as well as P.T. Barnum. He is often considered the father of the modern zoo because he introduced "natural" animal enclosures that included recreations of animals' native habitats. Hagenbeck founded Germany's most successful privately owned zoo, the Tierpark Hagenbeck, which moved to its present location in Hamburg-Stellingen in 1907. However, his pioneer role in displaying human beings aside animals, in what has been called "human zoos," is less well known.

When Hagenbeck was 14, his father, an amateur animal trainer, gave him some seals and a polar bear. His collection of animals grew until he needed large buildings to keep them in. Hagenbeck left his home in Hamburg to go with hunters and explorers to jungles and snow-clad mountains. He captured animals in nearly every land in the world. In 1874, he decided to exhibit Samoan and Sami people (Laplanders) as "purely natural" populations, with their tents, weapons, sleds, aside a group of reindeer.

In 1875, Hagenbeck began to exhibit his animals in all the large cities of Europe as well as in the United States.

In 1876, he sent a collaborator to the Egyptian Sudan to bring back some wild beasts and Nubians. The Nubian exhibit was very successful in Europe, and toured Paris, London, and Berlin. He also dispatched an agent to Labrador to secure a number of "Esquimaux" (Inuit) from the settlement of Hopedale; these Inuit were exhibited in his Hamburg Tierpark. Hagenbeck's exhibit of human beings, considered as "savages", in a "natural state," was the probable source of inspiration for Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire's similar "human zoo" exhibition in the Jardin d'acclimatation in Paris. Saint-Hilaire organized in 1877 two "ethnological exhibitions," presenting Nubians and Inuit to the public, thus succeeding to double the entrees of the zoo.

Hagenbeck also trained animals to display and sell to circuses at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1903. Hagenbeck's circus was one of the most popular attractions. His collection included large animals and reptiles. Many of of the animals were trained to do tricks. He crossbred in 1900 a female lion with a Bengal tiger, and sold the hybrid for $2 million to the Portuguese zoologist Bisiano Mazinho. Hagenbeck's trained animals also performed at amusement parks on New York City's Coney Island prior to 1914.

However, Hagenbeck dreamed of a permanent exhibit where animals could live in surroundings much like their natural homes. Despite the presence of the Zoological Garden of Hamburg, Hagenbeck opened his great zoo, the Tierpark Hagenbeck at Stellingen, near Hamburg in 1907. Today his ideas are followed by most large zoos.

In 1905, Hagenbeck used his outstanding skills as an animal collector to capture a thousand camels for the German Empire to use in Africa. He described his adventures and his methods of capturing and training animals in a book, «Beasts and Men», published in 1908.

German Federal Republic, 1994, Hegenbeck and animals

German Federal Republic, 2007.05.03, Bonn. Elephants

German Federal Republic, 2007, Centenary of Hagenbeck Zoo