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Through the Lion Gate - A History of the Berlin Zoo (Hardcover)
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Through the Lion Gate - A History of the Berlin Zoo (Hardcover)
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In 1943, fierce aerial bombardment razed the Berlin zoo and killed
most of its animals. But only two months after the war's end,
Berliners had already resurrected it, reopening its gates and
creating a symbol of endurance in the heart of a shattered city. As
this episode shows, the Berlin zoo offers one of the most
unusual-yet utterly compelling-lenses through which to view German
history. This enormously popular attraction closely mirrored each
of the political systems under which it existed: the authoritarian
monarchy of the kaiser, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and the
post-1945 democratic and communist states. Gary Bruce provides the
first English-language history of the Berlin zoo, from its founding
in 1844 until the 1990 unification of the West Berlin and East
Berlin zoos. At the center of the capital's social life, the Berlin
zoo helped to shape German views not only of the animal world but
also of the human world for more than 150 years. Given its enormous
reach, the German government used the zoo to spread its political
message, from the ethnographic display of Africans, Inuit, and
other "exotic" peoples in the late nineteenth century to the Nazis'
bizarre attempts to breed back long-extinct European cattle. By
exploring the intersection of zoology, politics, and leisure, Bruce
shows why the Berlin zoo was the most beloved institution in
Germany for so long: it allowed people to dream of another place,
far away from an often grim reality. It is not purely coincidence
that the profound connection of Berliners to their zoo intensified
through the bloody twentieth century. Its exotic, iconic
animals-including Rostom the elephant, Knautschke the hippo, and
Evi the sun bear-seemed to satisfy, even partially, a longing for a
better, more tranquil world.
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