| Zoological Garden of Hamburg | |
|---|---|
 A postcard from 1900 featuring an elephant at the Zoological Garden of Hamburg | |
 | |
| 53°35′43″N10°00′59″E / 53.595278°N 10.016389°E | |
| Date opened | 1863 |
| Date closed | 1930 |
| Location | Hamburg, Germany |
The Zoological Garden of Hamburg (German: Zoologischer Garten zu Hamburg) was a zoo in Hamburg, Germany that operated from 1863 until 1930. Its aquarium, which opened in 1864, was among the first in the world.
In the 1850s, Hamburg was the third-largest city in the German Confederation; only Berlin and Vienna were larger. Trading in wild animals had begun in 1820 and a road-house menagerie was in operation in the 1840s. A wealthy merchant named Ernst von Merck, a member of parliament in the German government at Frankfurt am Main in 1848 and 1849, assembled a society for the purposes of creating a zoo. On 10 July 1860, at the charter meeting of the Zoological Society of Hamburg (German: Zoologische Gesellschaft in Hamburg), Merck was selected as president. [1]
It was the fifth zoo in Germany, following the Berlin Zoological Garden in 1844, the Frankfurt Zoological Garden in 1858, the Cologne Zoological Garden in 1860 and the Dresden Zoo in 1861. [2]
The Society was a shareholding company. In 1861 it purchased a 13-hectare (32 acre) plot of land outside the Hamburg city walls, next to a municipal cemetery. In November 1862 the zoo issued additional shares to finance the construction of an aquarium. Such was the excitement around the project, that all new shares sold in 24 hours. [1]
The zoo was quite popular when it opened on 17 May 1863. Although the population of Hamburg was only 300,000, around 54,000 people visited the zoo in its first week of operation. Annual attendance at the zoo in its first ten years of operation was between 225,000 and 355,000 visitors. The zoo's first director Alfred Edmund Brehm invested heavily in building up a large collection, even larger than that of the Berlin Zoo for much of its history. The zoo had several remarkable breeding successes—it was the first to breed the Brazilian Tapir in 1868, the Malayan Tapir in 1879, and the now-extinct Schomburgk's Deer in 1870. [1] The zoo's aquarium, or the Marine Aquarium Temple, was among the best ever built. In 1865, a German national journal, Die Gartenlaube, declared an "Ocean Fairy Castle" superior to the aquarium of London. [4] The first Sumatran Rhinoceros ever seen in Europe was acquired by the Hamburg Zoological Garden in 1868. [5]
1863 also saw the birth of the zoo's first competitor, in a collection of exotic animals purchased by Carl Hagenbeck Sr. His son Carl Hagenbeck Jr. opened a competing facility in 1875, called Carl Hagenbeck's Tierpark. Though Hagenbeck's zoo was small, he acquired enough exotic animals to remain competitive. [1]
In 1907, Hagenbeck opened the new Tierpark Hagenbeck. The new facility revolutionized zoo design: instead of bars and cages, Hagenbeck became the first to use moats to separate animals from each other and the public. [6] The Hamburg Zoological Garden looked outdated in comparison. In its early years, the Tierpark attracted as many as a million visitors annually, double the best audiences ever drawn to the Hamburg Zoological Garden. [7]
World War I almost ruined both zoos. In 1915 the Hamburg zoological Garden built the world's largest primate house, with 22 outdoor and 69 indoor cages. Almost all the monkeys starved to death, however, during the war. [1]
After the war, the German economy collapsed. While the Hagenbeck zoo was able to rebuild its animal trade, the zoological society could not. On 30 December 1920 the society was liquidated and on 21 January 1921 the zoo closed. A new group of investors, the Hamburg Zoological Garden Corporation, took over the zoo, and rebuilt it to a massive collection, including 882 species and subspecies, but following the 1929 stock market crash, the zoo headed again toward bankruptcy. An attempt was made to save the corporation by making the facility half-amusement park and half-bird park. The attempt failed and in 1931 the corporation went bankrupt and the zoo was closed forever. The city of Hamburg took over the zoo's lease and converted the site into a public park (Planten un Blomen). [1]
Hellabrunn Zoo is a 40 hectare zoological garden in the Bavarian capital of Munich. The zoo is situated on the right bank of the river Isar, in the southern part of Munich near the quarter of Thalkirchen.
A menagerie is a collection of captive animals, frequently exotic, kept for display; or the place where such a collection is kept, a precursor to the modern zoo or zoological garden.
The Berlin Zoological Garden is the oldest surviving and best-known zoo in Germany. Opened in 1844, it covers 35 hectares and is located in Berlin's Tiergarten. With about 1,380 different species and over 20,200 animals, the zoo presents one of the most comprehensive collections of species in the world.
The Ueno Zoo is a 14.3-hectare (35-acre) zoo, managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and located in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is Japan's oldest zoo, opened on March 20, 1882. It is served by Ueno Station, Keisei Ueno Station and Nezu Station, with convenient access from several public transportation networks. The Ueno Zoo Monorail, the first monorail in the country, connected the eastern and western parts of the grounds, however the line was suspended from 2019 onwards due to ageing infrastructure until being announced as closing permanently on 27th December 2023.
A pumapard is a hybrid of a cougar and a leopard. Both male cougar with female leopard and male leopard with female cougar pairings have produced offspring. In general, these hybrids have exhibited a tendency to dwarfism.
Gottlob Heinrich (Henrik) Leutemann was a German artist and book illustrator. He was born in Leipzig and studied there.
Bioparco di Roma is a 17-hectare (42-acre) zoological garden located on part of the original Villa Borghese estate in Rome, Italy. There are 1,114 animals of 222 species maintained.
Carl Hagenbeck was a German merchant of wild animals who supplied many European zoos, as well as P. T. Barnum. He created the modern zoo with animal enclosures without bars that were closer to their natural habitat. The transformation of the zoo architecture initiated by him is known as the Hagenbeck revolution. Hagenbeck founded Germany's most successful privately owned zoo, the Tierpark Hagenbeck, which moved to its present location in Hamburg's Stellingen district in 1907. He was also an ethnography showman and a pioneer in displaying humans next to animals in human zoos.
A zoo is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes.
The Zoological Garden, Alipore is India's oldest formally stated zoological park and a big tourist attraction in Kolkata, West Bengal. It has been open as a zoo since 1876, and covers 18.811 ha. It is probably best known as the home of the Aldabra giant tortoise Adwaita, who was reputed to have been over 250 years old when he died in 2006. It is also home to one of the few captive breeding projects involving the Manipur brow-antlered deer. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Kolkata, it draws huge crowds during the winter season, especially during December and January. The highest attendance till date was on January 1, 2018 with 110,000 visitors.
A public aquarium (pl. aquaria) or public water zoo is the aquatic counterpart of a zoo, which houses living aquatic animal and plant specimens for public viewing. Most public aquariums feature tanks larger than those kept by home aquarists, as well as smaller tanks.
The ménagerie du Jardin des plantes is a zoo in Paris, France, belonging to the botanical garden Jardin des Plantes. Founded in 1794, largely with animals brought from the royal zoo of the Palace of Versailles, abandoned because of the French Revolution, it is the second oldest zoological garden in the world. Today, the zoo contains many rare smaller and medium-sized mammals, and a variety of birds and reptiles.
The Tierpark Berlin is one of two zoos located in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1955 and is located in Friedrichsfelde on the former grounds of Friedrichsfelde Palace, which is situated within the zoo. As of 31 December 2013, the zoo houses 7,250 animals from 846 species, in an area of 160 hectares. Tierpark Berlin also features two public exhibits free of charge, one being the Bärenschaufenster for American black bears. The park is also home to the Treskow family's historic family burial ground.
The Tierpark Hagenbeck is a zoo in Stellingen, Hamburg, Germany. The collection began in 1863 with animals that belonged to Carl Hagenbeck Sr. (1810–1887), a fishmonger who became an amateur animal collector. The park itself was founded by Carl Hagenbeck Jr. in 1907. It is known for being the first zoo to use open enclosures surrounded by moats, rather than barred cages, to better approximate animals' natural environments.
National Zoological Gardens of Sri Lanka is a zoological garden in Dehiwala, Sri Lanka, founded in 1936. It is home to various birds, mammals, reptiles, fish and amphibians. The zoo not only exhibits animals from Sri Lanka, but also exhibits species from across Asian and other parts of the globe.
A travelling menagerie was a touring group of showmen and animal handlers who visited towns and cities with common and exotic animals. The term "menagerie", first used in seventeenth century France, was primarily used to refer to aristocratic or royal animal collections. Most visitors to travelling menageries would never have the opportunity to see such animals under other circumstances and their arrival in a town would catalyse great excitement. The shows were both entertaining and educational; in 1872 The Scotsman described George Wombwell's travelling menagerie as "[having] done more to familiarise the minds of the masses of our people with the denizens of the forest than all the books of natural history ever printed during its wandering existence."
Rostock Zoo is a zoo in the city of Rostock, founded in 1899. It covers 56 hectares and with 4,500 animals from 320 species, Rostock Zoo is the largest zoo on the German east coast. Rostock Zoo is studbook keeper of Polar bears within the European Endangered Species Programme. The director of Rostock Zoo is Udo Nagel.
The Poznań Old Zoo is one of the oldest zoological gardens in Poland, located in the city of Poznań, Greater Poland Voivodeship. It was founded in 1874 and was included on the register of objects of cultural heritage in 1978 as a unique example of a vivarium. The zoo started as a few animals kept by a restaurant owner in the early 1870s. It can thus be considered the oldest continuously operating Polish zoological garden. Together with the New Zoo in Poznań, which opened in 1974, it forms an integral part of the whole complex known as The Zoological Garden in Poznań.
Magdeburg Zoo is a zoo in the city of Magdeburg in the region Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. The zoo was founded in 1950, and covers 16 hectares.
The Verband der Zoologischen Gärten, until 2014 Verband Deutscher Zoodirektoren, is the leading association of scientifically managed zoological gardens in German-speaking countries. A zoo is considered to be scientifically managed if it is run by a director with an academic education, usually a biologist or a veterinarian, and if he or she follows and implements scientific standards of zoology, conservation, and zoo pedagogy.
