‘War Zone Zoo’: the Berlin Zoo and WW2
May 1945. The war in
Europe has come to an end. Bombardments by the Allies and house-to-house combat
between the German Wehrmacht and the Russian Red Army have turned the city into
a pile of rubble. The impressive 19th century zoo next to Tiergarten Park has
also suffered heavily from the violence of war. Many stray bombs came down on
the premises. During the battle of Berlin, the zoo turned into a battlefield as
tanks and shells left their destructive traces. The premises of the zoo, once
so well-attended, has deteriorated to a gruesome cratered landscape. Dead
soldiers and carcasses of animals lie scattered everywhere. Less than 100 of
the approximately 3,500 animals have survived.
‘War Zone Zoo’ tells
the gripping tale of the Berlin Zoo, its employees and its animals in wartime.
Its history and restoration also pass review. This is a story of how violence
and dictatorship made the Berlin Zoo lose its innocence, but it is also a story
of love for animals, human powers of survival and the rebirth of the historic
and public icon the Berlin Zoo still is today. Below are two chapters of this
new book written by Kevin Prenger.
The zoo under fire
On September 8,
1941, the zoo was struck by the first bombs. Six 250 pounders inflicted
particularly heavy damage on the forest restaurant and its surroundings while
the cattle stables were set on fire by incendiaries. Damage was minimal however
and was repaired within a few weeks. For two years afterwards, the zoo was not
hit again with the exception of five 250 pounders which came down on
uncultivated terrain between the enclosures of the cattle and the wolves. It
was on November 22 and 23, 1943 the zoo was subjected to the heaviest air raid
so far. Arthur “Bomber” Harris, commander-in-chief of R.A.F. Bomber Command had
launched the “Battle of Berlin” a few days previously, intended to force
Germany to surrender by massive bombing attacks on Berlin and other cities in
Germany. On November 22, 764 bombers of the R.A.F. unleashed a massive attack
on the western part of Berlin, including Tiergarten. Over a period of a week,
more attacks would follow, claiming 3,758 dead, 10,000 injured and half a million
homeless. When it was over, hardly a single habitable house was still standing
in the streets around the zoo.
The zoo did not fare
much better than its surroundings. On November 22, sometime between 19:15 and
19:30, the zoo was hit by various types of bombs, including more than 1,000
incendiary bombs. Raging fires could hardly be extinguished because the water mains
had also been damaged by the bombs. Numerous animal houses and enclosures were
struck by bombs or burned to the ground, including the houses of the elephants,
monkeys and predators. Other buildings were damaged as well, such as the
quarantine building, various utility buildings and Heck’s villa. In less than
15 minutes, 30% of the zoo population was killed. The next day, towards 20:00
the aquarium building was completely destroyed by a direct hit. In the morning,
passers-by on the Budapesterstraße were confronted with the gruesome sight of
the lifeless bodies of 4 crocodiles. The reptiles had probably been flung out
onto the street by the explosion. If they had survived the blast, they must
have died from the cold outside instead.
Following the
bombardments, frightening rumors erupted in the city about dangerous animals
having escaped from the zoo. In the dark bomb shelters just the thought of
roaming poisonous snakes and hungry crocodiles was enough to frighten the
people to death. Stories about elephants stampeding through the streets and
tigers prowling through the ruins fed the imagination but actually, the
Berliners would never have to be afraid of escaped dangerous animals. Apart
from the dingo that Maria van Maltzan took back to the zoo, only a few monkeys,
smaller animals and birds escaped. Josepha von Koskull, employed as a
Luftschützwärtin (member of the air raid protection), observed another escaped
animal in the morning after the air raid of November 19. After having weathered
ashes and the red hot glare of smoldering heaps of debris on her way to the
zoo, she noticed a bewildered looking “shepherd’s dog” near her completely
burnt out guard house creeping past. She took pity on the exhausted and dazed
animal and wanted to share her slice of bread with it. Just as she was on the
point of doing so, two zoo keepers turned up to take the escaped wolf back to
its cage.
During the
bombardment, many animals had not even had the chance to escape as they had
been killed during the inferno. Of the larger animals, 7 elephants, a black
rhino, a chimpanzee, an orangutan, 7 predators, a couple of giraffes, 2 pygmy
hippos, an elephant seal and half of the antelope and deer had been killed. A
larger part had survived though: 721 mammals and 1,212 birds of various
species. Among the survivors were giraffe Rieke, female orangutan Buschi and
gorilla Pongo who had been with the zoo since 1936 and had appeared on the
cover of the 1937 issue of the visitor’s guide. There was only one survivor in
the heavily damaged elephant house, the bull Siam which had lost its entire
harem. As sad as the losses may have been though, they could have been far
worse if manager Heck had not evacuated a large number of animals in advance to
zoos elsewhere within the Reich.
Prior to the
bombardments of November 1943, a number of Heck’s colleagues had declared
themselves willing to take in animals for the time being as well as after the
raids. Animals were temporarily housed in the zoos of Wien-Schönbrunn, Breslau
(Wroclaw), Frankfurt am Main, Halle, Cologne and Königsberg (Kaliningrad).
Private collections also had taken animals in and on the Schorf Moor cattle
enjoyed a habitat undoubtedly better than that of the zoo. A very helpful zoo
that took in a large number of animals from Berlin after the November 1943
raids, was the Mulhouse zoo in the Alsace. At that time the city, Mülhausen in
German, was part of the German Empire. On February 7 and 10, 1944 transports
from Berlin arrived carrying 237 mammals and 149 species of birds, an amount
which would have easily filled a fair sized zoo by itself. Out of the 750 of
247 species,
evacuated from
Berlin for their safety, only giraffe Rieke returned from Vienna, in 1953. The
other animals had either died of old age or by the violence of war, most other
zoos in the Reich had been subjected to as well.
Picture
Buildings in flames
after a bombardment of Berlin in July 1944.(Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J30142 /
CC-BY-SA)
While clouds of dust
were slowly descending after the November raids, Berliners went about assessing
the damage and salvaging the victims; in the zoo, work was taken up quickly to
care for the surviving animals and to clear the premises as far as possible.
Forest workers of the Reichsforstamt, soldiers from the Flak tower, a police
unit, a platoon of the Technische Nothilfe (emergency rescue team), engineers
of the Wehrmacht and prisoners-of-war, were all deployed to clear up the zoo. A
team of veterinarians was brought in to dissect the giant corpses of the
elephants so they could be taken to the destruction facility in pieces. In
order to take off the edge of hunger after the hard labor, a canteen was
established with a very peculiar menu. “We had meat coming out of our ears”,
Heck declared. “Many of the edible animals which had fallen victim to the air
raid ended up in the pot. Particularly tasty were the crocodiles’ tails; cooked
tender in big containers, they tasted like fat chicken. The dead deer, buffalo
and antelopes provided hundreds of meals for man and beast alike. Later on,
bear ham and bear sausage were particular delicacies.”
For the zoo, the
1943 November raids were not yet the end of the terror from the sky as it was
hit again by explosives, incendiaries and aerial mines on January 29 and 30,
February 15, March 24 , May 8, in October, December 31, 1944 and on February
24, 1945. The zoo, once the glory of Berlin with its grandeur and richness in
animals, turned to rubble just like the surrounding city. Yet the zoo remained
open to the public until the last. As late as April 22, 1945, it closed its
gates to the public. It was a perennial concern for the keepers to obtain
sufficient food for the animals in a city where everything was on ration and to
help those animals, used to a warmer climate, survive the cold winters. Various
buildings proved to be uninhabitable after raids, requiring a search for
alternative housing. For instance the pygmy hippos were temporarily housed in a
lavatory building where the temperature could still be kept at an acceptable
level. Various buildings had undergone hap hazard repairs to offer the animals
at least some protection and simultaneously shore up their ramshackled housing.
Saved from the fire
In the middle of the
war, May 29, 1943, a baby hippo was born. After the defeat in the battle for
Stalingrad (St. Petersburg) in the previous winter, in which the Wehrmacht
suffered crippling losses, the arrival of new life was an encouraging event for
keepers and visitors of the zoo alike. The young bull was baptized Knautschke.
After having survived the heavy bombardments of November 1943, the eight month
old animal barely escaped with its life during the air raid of January 30,
1944. The little hippo survived, thanks to a couple of courageous young men,
one of them being Peter Schmidt. He was posted to the Zoo Flak bunker as of
January 12 as Luftwaffenhelfer (air force apprentice). Along with other boys,
15 and 16 years of age, he was tasked with various jobs, ferrying munitions for
example. Owing to a shortage of men, boys like Peter were soon employed to
operate the anti-aircraft guns. Because Peter had not yet finished his
training, he was suspended from this job in January 1944.
In order to give
Peter and other inexperienced boys something to do, their Hauptwachtmeister
offered them the opportunity to report as volunteers for guarding and clearing
jobs in the zoo. Most of them, including Peter considered this an adventurous
job and signed up for it. So it came to be that on in the night of January 30,
Peter and his comrades were in the zoo. A year earlier to the day, the 10th
anniversary of the seizure of power by the Nazis had been celebrated but after
the air raids on German cities, the loss of the battle of Stalingrad and the
defeat of Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps in North-Africa in May 1943, there was no
festive mood at the time. That night, around 20:15, Berlin was hit again by a
heavy bombardment causing further damage to the zoo as well. Places like the
main restaurant, the ostrich house and the hippo house were hit. Peter and the
other Luftwaffe apprentices had their work cut out for them.
As they made their
way through the dark zoo, they stumbled upon a burning building made of bricks.
It was the hippo house. It had various entrances, one of them destined for
Knautschke. His exit was blocked by debris and pieces of wood. Peter and the
other boys saw how the young hippo vainly tried to escape through a side exit.
The passage however was too small for the already fairly large animal and its
head got stuck. Wheezing and snorting, the hippo tried to get clear while
glowing tinder and burning pieces of the roof were falling on it. The boys took
pity on the helpless animal and tried to enlarge the exit. The masonry had
become fissured from the heat and the vibration and between the three of them,
they managed to work some chunks free so Knautschke would fit in the opening.
Subsequently he jumped into the water basin with a big splash, disappearing in
a cloud of steam.
Peter and his
comrades were relieved they had freed Knautschke from his precarious position
but wondered whether they had done the right thing. They could not assess the
condition of the animal as the young hippo had been subjected to the heat and
its skin had been burned in various places. Despondently they returned to the
Flak bunker. They later learned their rescue attempt had been successful.
Knautschke’s injuries turned out to be minor. Manager Heck invited Peter and
the others to the zoo and personally showed them around, carrying the young
chimpanzee Susi on his arm. Susi was to survive the war, just like Knautschke.
The hippo became the darling of the public and would produce 35 offspring. His
life story had a bad ending though. During a fight with one of his sons in
1988, his lower yaw became so badly damaged he was no longer able to eat and he
was put down at the age of 46. Nowadays, a life size bronze sculpture of the
popular animal, one of the few that would survive the war, stands at the entrance
of the new hippo building.
Picture
Life size sculpture of Knutschke, the hippo that had
been saved from a burning building in the zoo and survived the war. (Manfred
Gräfe, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin / CC-BY-SA)
Picture
Post war picture of hippos Knautschke and Bulette,
one of his 35 offspring. (Zoologischer Garten Berlin)
