Remember Knut? He was that little white fluff ball that romped into the hearts of Berliners, and of people all over the world, in the spring of 2007. Indeed, the baby polar bear hype became so intense that fans flew in from as far away as Venezuela to celebrate his first birthday.
Now, Knut is about to turn two -- his birthday is December 5. But he is no longer quite the furry idol that he used to be. He is slowly becoming just another member of the pantheon of stars who have enthralled zoo-goers in the German capital over the years. Which isn't much of a demotion, as a new book, chronicling Berlin's greatest fauna sensations points out.
The book, called "Knautschke, Knut & Co." (the first being a reference to a famous hippopotamus that resided in the Berlin Zoo from his birth in 1943 until he died in 1988), documents a number of animals that have waddled, slithered, flown or crawled to stardom. Knautschke, for example, was one of just 91 Berlin zoo animals to have survived World War II. Swampy the alligator, straight from Mississippi, was presented to the Berlin Zoo by American soldiers in 1952. Kosko the elephant was given to the Tierpark, the East Berlin zoo, by Ho Chi Minh himself. And then there was Bobby the gorilla, who moved to Berlin in 1928, riding the train into Germany from Marseille.
"There have been numerous rare and threatened species that have lived in the Berlin Zoo and the Tierpark over the decades. But over and above the species, it is the individuals that have especially fascinated people," writes author Bernhard Blaszkiewitz, who is director of the Berlin Zoo, in the introduction.
And in his book, Blaszkiewitz does his best to bring alive these animal "personalities," lovingly documenting how the animals he portrays arrived in Berlin and how they departed. He tells the stories from the perspective of a zoo-keeper, describing many of the quirks of his charges -- and the stories are illustrated with numerous historical photos from both zoos.
Chi-Chi the panda bear, for example, is shown playing with a hose, tumbling down a log and bathing in a tub. Chi-Chi, the book says, was originally meant for a zoo in the US, but ended up in Berlin because of a US trade embargo with China. "Chi-Chi travelled from Beijing to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian rail line."
Rike the giraffe was born in 1938 in Berlin. Both her parents were killing in an Allied bombing raid on Berlin on Nov. 23, 1943 and Rike herself was wounded by shrapnel. She was quickly evacuated to the zoo in Vienna and after the war became the only larger animal from the Berlin collection to be returned, arriving back in Berlin in 1953 to much fanfare and press attention.
Evi the sun bear, born in the East Berlin Tierpark in 1961, was one of the first sun bear's ever to be born in captivity. And she came as quite a surprise, entering the world during peak visitor hours as zoo-goers stared in amazement. The keepers quickly shooed away the visitors to give Evi's mother some peace and quiet, but a few weeks later, the keepers had to take over as Evi's mom began ignoring her new daughter. Evi was then brought up in zoo director Heinrich Dathe's apartment.
Some, of course, might find it odd that Blaszkiewitz has written such a moving book about his charges. He has been accused of a number of dastardly, animal-related deeds through the years, including feeding goats from the petting zoo to wolves and of killing kittens with his bare hands -- both of which he admitted to doing. He denied reports earlier this year that he had illegally sold a pygmy hippo and a black bear for slaughter.
Still, his new book, published by Lehmanns Media (link and book in German only), is an entertaining documentation of the history of Berlin zoo favorites. And Knut certainly makes an appearance. But only at the very end.
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