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from the current Jungle World :

The inventor of animal welfare
He zoologist, zoo, animal researchers, animal welfare, veterinary medicine, documentary filmmaker, author, television host, publisher was an encyclopedia - and a controversial figure Bernhard Grzimek. In those days he would have turned 100 years old.


by Ivo Bozic

Barely 99 481 57 199 wildebeest and zebras were Bernhard Grzimek and his son Michael in 1958 in the Serengeti. Today, more than a million wildebeest and 200,000 zebras in the park, one of the largest and best known the world. As the first German Grzimek received for his film "Serengeti shall not die," with whom he made the National Park in the savannah known around the world, an Oscar. He tirelessly raised funds and organized political support for the project. "Without the campaign Grzimek," summed up the Germany radio, "would the biodiversity of the Serengeti history - as well as on Mount Kilimanjaro, where previously met the Maasai herding their flocks of elephants and lions. Today, there are still no Maasai lions, only plantations. "

Bernhard Grzimek, on 24 April would have been 100 years old, we owe much more than just this wonderful National Park in Tan ¬ sania. After the war he was to the Frankfurt Zoo helped back on their feet, made him one of the largest zoos in the world. Through his popular television show "A Place for Animals" that aired 1956-1980 in about 175 episodes and reached today unimaginable ratings to 70 percent, he awoke in a whole generation of interest and sym ¬ pathy for wildlife and nature - at a time when nobody talked about environmental protection. Grzimek was the first pictures of the seal hunt in the Arctic and showed far too little space pent caged hens. At the end of each show, he called on the audience, which he always responded with "My dear friends," to Donations and gathered so million for animal and environmental protection.

Bernhard Grzimek can be called "father of the modern animal protection" in Germany. An "animal rights", vegan or whatever today "in this picturesque Animal liberators scene romps such Grzimek was never. From their point of view Grzimek's probably a traitor, because the professor was not a vegetarian, he supported animal testing, and as a longtime director of the Frankfurt Zoo, he was obviously no one attributed the same animal and human rights. He saw it rather as a civilization, to explicitly human responsibility to protect the wildlife.

Grzimek security came as a start 20th Century-born, even from a zoological tradition that was inconceivable without colonialism. But he was able to face more and more to break out of this tradition. Especially the example of the Serengeti National Park in the former German East Africa can be seen as Grzimek ultimately created not only a great protection ¬ space for animals, but also economic independence for the population of a region that for centuries lonialmächten of Ko ¬ exploited and enslaved had been. Grzimek knew that the protection of wildlife and the social welfare and education of the people are mutually dependent.

nature and colonialism are in a highly contradictory and reciprocal relationship. On the one hand, would be protected in many African regions - at least in the last century, when the were most reserves - not have been necessary if European colonialists and big game hunter there, not the supposedly "natural balance" between man and animal had messed ¬. On the other hand, African societies have not developed without colonialism? Of course, that! And they continue to evolve and only the existence of the numerous National Parks sees to it that important habitats for animals are permanent.

In Establishment of the Serengeti National Park, the relationship of human rights and animal rights an important role. To protect animals, people had to give way. Many Maasai have been forcibly relocated to make room for the park. Grzimek advocated this. You can see the very colonial gesture, with the Europeans usurped, to decide the fate of African indigenous people to protect a "nature", which, due to their exotic declared as a protected site (while it home safely exterminated wolves and bears). But this can not be accused Grzimek, he also took care of the local wildlife, and also was in the exact same gesture also Contrary, because Grzimek rejected then existing ideas, to let them live a few Maasai tribes just in the National Park from, because he Massai not as the animals looked like "natural" way of life is irrevocable and protect from ethno-exotic interest in the same way would like gazelles and buffalo, "People can be (...) do not force them to remain wild or to not grow. Therefore, we have now seen everywhere: A National Park must be deserted, there are neither Africans nor Europeans into "

It is a paradox, but just with this imperial approach to Grzimek went outside the colonial and racist. Thinking. Natives were no longer considered to enslave animals, "like other creatures in the" endless country (which is translated from the Maasai word "Seregenti") are eaten eat and but more and more as people and viable and willing companies taken seriously. It was necessary for it, however, the animal rights activists today accept so much called into question in line between humans and animals without restriction.

As compensation for the resettlement of people in Tanzania were built many schools and hospitals, many displaced people found work in the Nature Park or emerging from Grzimek advertised ambitious nature park tourism. So followed the colonial conservation ideas through the capitalization of land and people - and thus a more effective conservation. Nevertheless, the colonial view at that time was still omnipresent. The historian Bernard Gissibl from the University of Mannheim thinks about, "that had the image of Africa as a heavenly wilderness, to preserve it usurped the Europeans as a cultural object, and thus motivated policy interventions are rooted in the German colonial rule before World War II." Grzimek criticized Gissibl, "mobilized with his films and TV shows an enormous generosity of the German television viewers, so that the colonial nature conservation in could be East Africa after independence Tanzania not only continue but be intensified. " Fortunately, you can say. Thousands of National Parks serve the world today to get their animals to live. And many of them also help people to have access to nature. Thus, the number of ¬ rich academic debates about the colonial, but also mission historical roots of animal and environmental protection, and also to the concept of the "National Park", at the latest when it comes to the practical consequences is full of contradictions open.

Ambivalent was, moreover, in Grzimek's life a lot. During the Nazi period he was "reasonably kept clean," as the 'World' formulated. In a recently published biography occupied Claudia Sewig Grzimek's Nazi Party membership, which he denied himself. He had probably been an opportunist, but nothing is known about what makes him appear as the active National Socialists. In the last days of World War Grzimek deserter. He is hiding not only from the Gestapo, who has previously searched his home for hidden Jews, but also against his wife, who imagines him on the Eastern Front, while he is with his mistress and their child on the way to Westphalia.

three children he has with his wife Hilda, with whom he later lived together again. His beloved son Michael comes over all 1959 at the filming of the Serengeti-film in a plane crash, his son Thomas in 1980, taking the life. Grzimek can divorce his wife in 1973 and married five years later, the wife of his deceased son, Michael, that his own daughter.

Grzimek was in many ways (he is said to have also collected joke article), succinctly said, a queer fellow. As contradictory as much was what he was doing, so consequently he did almost everything for love of the animals and added that is not debatable in any case, made the animal and environmental protection ideas popular in Germany. He died on 13 March 1987 during a circus show in Frankfurt am Main. It was just a Tiger dressage.