Roscher, Mieke. "Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin, 1955– 61." Animal History in the Modern City: Exploring Liminality
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Roscher, Mieke. "Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin, 1955– 61." Animal History in the Modern City: Exploring Liminality. By Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher and Philip Howell. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 201–220. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 26 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350054066.0017>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 26 September 2021, 04:24 UTC. Copyright © Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher, Philip Howell and Contributors, 2019 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. Animal History in the Modern City Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 12 Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin, 1955–61 Mieke Roscher Introduction When in August 1955 the East Berlin Tierpark opened the gates to the former Schlosspark Friedrichsfelde, a predominantly, but not exclusively, East German audience was offered the opportunity to witness both the wonders of the animal world and the fruits of an ideal socialist society. The grounds of the former chateau were opened up to both animals and humans providing a lush green sward for the grazing ungulates and an extensive public park for the latter: a reward for the hard-working population of the city, as the GDR leadership proudly declared. In a Berlin still under reconstruction, the Tierpark, like its West Berlin counterpart, the rather better-known Zoologischer Garten in the British sector, offered a vision of a better life for the animal inmates and the human visitors alike. In this chapter, I place the development of these two zoos side by side, in the historical framework of the Cold War. I hope to show how the sites that were to become the new Tierpark as well as the rebuilt Berlin Zoo were the result of a new political as well as simply a new cultural geography, making them liminal places whose liminality was embodied in the captive animals themselves. These animals should be considered liminal, not only because they were caught between the statuses of wild and domesticated, but also because they were caught between the past, present and future of the German metropolis. The concept of liminality used here is focused therefore on the in-between-ness of both space and time. On the one hand, the argument made here is very much in line with the situation described by the animal geographers Chris Wilbert and Chris Philo, who refer to ‘“in-between” animals finding themselves, appropriately enough, utilizing “in-between” spaces’.1 In this sense non-human animals serve both as transgressors and translators of a given space such as the zoo, active occupiers rather than mere occupants. On the other hand, a broader and more expansive understanding of liminality is drawn upon, one that takes in the in-between stages of cultural and political transitions. Animals are not only subjected to these transitions but are indeed their prime material. The approach subscribes to the ‘claim’ within political and social theory, ‘that liminal situations can be applied to whole societies going through a crisis Animal History in the Modern City.indb 201 17-05-2018 17:20:35 202 Animal History in the Modern City or a “collapse of order”’.2 With this precise argument in mind, I will attempt to uncover liminal moments within the life of the two zoos as distinct spaces, asking in what way zoo animals can be seen as liminal animals, and adding a new dimension to the ways in which the post-war and Cold War era can themselves be described as liminal. Lastly, I will try to describe how these complex states of liminality have in their turn influenced zoos and their animals. The liminality of the zoo According to a straightforward definition, such as the one given by the German federal law on nature protection, zoos are to be characterized as ‘permanent places in which wild animals are kept for display for more than seven days a year’.3 This definition maintains the importance of both spatial and temporal interpretations. The importance of time may be extended, however. Throughout their history, starting off with the post-revolutionary Jardin des Plantes in Paris (see Chapter 6) and the establishment of the London Zoo in 1828, zoos act as temporal markers of the transition from feudal to bourgeois society, for instance, or from the colonial to the imperial state,4 or, at the end of the century, from the age of enlightenment to, one might argue, the age of consumerism (see the previous chapter by Wiebke Reinert). As such, zoos always seem to stand on the threshold of one historical period and another. They also straddle debates on the place of the natural sciences in society, the rise of evolutionary theories, questions of race and belonging, the distinction between savagery and civilization and matters of inclusion and exclusion more generally. The opening up of the zoo to the general public and the working classes in particular, like what happened in London and Berlin by the end of the nineteenth century, also marks significant societal changes – enshrining human civility while presenting animal nature. In the building of zoos, a re-enactment of civilized order was clearly envisaged. By the turn of the century, almost all European countries and capitals of any pretension to civilization would provide a home for zoos, with cities in settler colonies following suit during the first half of the twentieth century. Civility as a powerful trope was also paraded as the animus of the animal welfare movement, whose origins can be traced back to the Victorian and Wilhelminian eras in Britain and Germany respectively.5 This abiding concern with civilized society survived even the continent’s darkest hour, and only became more significant: after the atrocities of the National Socialist regime in Germany, zoos offered an opportunity for restoring the image of a civilized nation. They also provided a place where it seemed legitimate to mourn the dead and to lament the destruction caused by the war.6 These reconciliatory steps were taken in the twin German states that came into being as a result of the war, and for all that they led in different directions they found common ground in the urgency displayed in attempting to provide or restore a zoo culture for the masses. In West Berlin, the first set of steps to re-open the almost totally destroyed Zoologischer Garten were taken soon after the end of the Second World War.7 Only ninety-one animals had survived the war, most falling victim to the bombings, or to shootings and even stabbings. After cleaning the area of debris, securing the remaining Animal History in the Modern City.indb 202 17-05-2018 17:20:35 Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 203 cages, erecting makeshift roofs and replacing walls and heating, the Zoologischer Garten reopened in the fall of 1945 – albeit in what we can describe as a liminal condition, for the rituals that guaranteed full belonging, social as well as political, had yet to be performed. In fact, it was a ramshackle operation: when the restaurants were working, for instance, some entrances had to be sealed in order to prevent ‘strangers’ from entering the zoo, as Katharina Heinroth, zoo director from 1945 to 1956, reported.8 Heinroth herself can be regarded as a transitional figure in the history of the Berlin Zoologischer Garten, inheriting the post from Lutz Heck, a fervent Nazi infamous for his programme of ‘breeding back’ supposedly pure Germanic animals such as the European bison and the aurochs.9 With Heck disgraced as well as fleeing from Soviet persecution, it fell to Heinroth not only to rebuild the zoo, but also to integrate it into the unfamiliar political geography of a city under fragmented allied control. In many ways, Heinroth like many German women, suddenly found herself in positions of authority, albeit only temporarily. With the coming ‘re-patriarchization’ of the German Federal Republic, in particular, its labour market reverting from its wartime shape, this period constitutes a liminal stage in itself, as the zoo and other institutions were charged with bringing some kind of civility to the German nation (or nations) and to help rebuild diplomatic ties with former enemies.10 Like many other women Heinroth was eventually forced to leave her position when a better and – perhaps more significantly – a male candidate became available – in this case, Heinz-Georg Klös, who took office in 1957. The Zoologischer Garten under her direction had already accomplished its mission as a standard-bearer for stability in uncertain times, as Berlin was slowly restored to its place among the great European cities. But by increasingly catering for a male working population, the zookeepers in particular, many of whom like Klös had been held in captivity as allied prisoners of war, this rehabilitation meant the end of one transitional period and the beginning of another. As the post-war period developed, however, economic stabilization, at least for West Germany, was accompanied by the political destabilization of the Cold War, ushering in a new transitional phase: no less important for the zoo as a Berlin institution. On a more general level, zoos can rightfully be regarded as the first and foremost markers of urbanity and urbanism.11 Since their inception in the nineteenth century they stood for the locus primus of the civilized city, where feral spaces were firmly under control. The modernization process following the rebuilding of Berlin clearly endorsed such aims, though they were given in these circumstances the very highest political priority, as documents between the senate and Klös demonstrate.12 Klös began his work where Heinroth had left off, albeit with greater vigour: Klös wanting to leave his own mark in the working of the zoo.