Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo

Animals, History, Culture

by Nigel Rothfels

To modern sensibilities, nineteenth-century zoos often seem to be unnatural places where animals led miserable lives in cramped, wrought-iron cages. Today zoo animals, in at least the better zoos, wander in open spaces that resemble natural habitats and are enclosed, not by bars, but by moats, cliffs, and other landscape features. In Savages and Beasts , Nigel Rothfels traces the origins of the modern zoo to the efforts of the German animal entrepreneur Carl Hagenbeck. By the late nineteenth century, Hagenbeck had emerged as the world's undisputed leader in the capture and transport of exotic animals. His business included procuring and exhibiting indigenous peoples in highly profitable spectacles throughout Europe and training exotic animals―humanely, Hagenbeck advertised―for circuses around the world. When in 1907 the Hagenbeck Animal Park opened in a village near Hamburg, Germany, Hagenbeck brought together all his business interests in a revolutionary zoological park. He moved wild animals out of their cages and into "natural landscapes" alongside "primitive" peoples from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the islands of the Pacific. Hagenbeck had invented a new way of imagining the animals and people on exhibit appeared to be living in the wilds of their native lands. By looking at Hagenbeck's multiple enterprises, Savages and Beasts demonstrates how seemingly enlightened ideas about the role of zoos and the nature of animal captivity developed within the essentially tawdry business of placing exotic creatures on public display. Rothfels provides both fascinating reading and much-needed historical perspective on the nature of our relationship with the animal kingdom.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Animals, Anthropology, Wildlife, Cultural

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2002

Reviews

[Darnoc Leadburger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going to zoos is one of my favorite things to do, so I figured that (between reading science fiction and trying to read books about animal biology/behavior and the like) it would behoove me to read some historical accounts of zoos like Nigel Rothfels' biography of Carl Hagenbeck, the German man often called the father of the modern zoo. I found it for cheap on eBay, read it, and was... I wouldn't say that I was disappointed, but this book isn't exactly what it says on the cover. Calling this an account of "The Birth of the Modern Zoo" makes you think that this will talk about how zoos progressed in the 20th century, but it's really about the "birth," with Rothfels having one core conceit about the designs behind modern zoos and building his whole novel around that one illuminating line. It's a well written book, but it feels disingenuous at times and just didn't satisfy everything I was looking for. That doesn't mean it's a bad book, but I feel like my review won't have too much to add to other reviews here on Goodreads... at least I'll go a bit more in depth with the summary.

The Introduction to the book sets the stage for Rothfels' later points pretty well without giving his whole game away. He talks about human relations with and the treatment of gorillas (which can admittedly be problematic) before getting into how zoos, even if animals are in exhibits meant to mimic their natural habitats, are primarily for people, and not animals; they exist so that we can share moments with the animals. He even says that going to zoos is unsatisfying most of the time for most people. But before more moralizing, he goes through "Gardens of History" (zoos used to be called zoological gardens and so forth), from Babylonian kings to Eugene's scientifically-minded Belvedere gardens to public zoos in first-world cities like New York in the early twentieth century. Themes of conservation and education can be found deeper in the past than one might expect, but that's counterbalanced by looking at bear pits, archaic exhibits where bears are kept in... well... pits... which are sadly occasionally in operation to this very day. A painting of the zoo in Regent's Park is supposed to show us how the zoo was focused on people first (even though it's only one artist's representation...), and there's even a look at travelling menageries. But it's with Chapter 2 ("Catching Animals") that we finally explore the Hagenbacks. We start with Carl Sr., a fishmonger who accidentally received seals and showed them around Europe as mermaids and made a surprising amount of money off it. It sounds a bit silly, doesn't it? But there was money to be made here, and he started buying and selling exotic animals like hyenas. It was a hobby for him, but it became a career to his son Carl Jr., who expanded it widely throughout the 1860s, leading the family to move to a new location. In 1864 Carl Jr. made a smart move by hiring the animal catcher Casanova directly to him, eliminating the need for middlemen - he soon hired other catchers this way and received a wide variety of animals from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. These animals went to private collections, circuses, and zoos. We receive some occasionally depressing looks into the world of animal catching - mothers were taken so their young could be peacefully extracted and all of that kind of stuff - but professional catching became a real career path. This kind of catching has faded out of existence - it's not usually legal and isn't condoned - but it was an interesting walk down history.

The longest part of this narrative is "Fabulous Animals; Showing People," where we get into the controversial part of Hagenbeck's life: people shows. By the mid-70s, the exotic animal business was dying thanks to competition and zoos being able to breed their own stock, but a friend of Hagenbeck's, upon hearing he was shipping reindeer out to zoos, suggested that he get Laplanders (Eskimos) to accompany them. In 1875, six Sami arrived in Hamburg and spent time being on display on the Hagenbeck display; this made quite a bit of money, which led to more people shows (which showcased everyone from Africans to Asian Indians) making the rounds throughout Europe. Hagenbeck said that these shows were unique because they showed true culture, as unsullied as possible by European influence. They caused some stir, but a good chunk of this section asks if the people shows were genuinely educational; after all, plenty of academics spent time studying native peoples and documenting things that otherwise would've been impossible to know. These shows continued for decades, but attendance was declining, and the last one in 1931 had to be sent home early. But Hagenbeck had another enterprise: "Paradise." After some lion training he did in the late 1880s, he attended a World Exhibition deal and showed off well-trained animals, and he credited his success to using carrots rather than sticks on his stock. His animal trading empire was then doing better thanks to new zoos and hunting parks, and he needed more space to put his animals. He bought land in 1902 and started building the Animal Park, slated to show animals in bar-less exhibits modelled after their natural habitats, just like with his people shows and little travelling exhibitions of mixed-animal exhibits, but his Park (which opened in 1907) was something else. Some people critiqued it; some praised it. It was surely different than other zoos, although most of the animals there were simply in transit between himself and other clients. Hagenbeck started pushing the narrative of the Animal Park as a bibical ark for the animals, and that's where the bold statement made in the book's Conclusion was: Hagenbeck's contribution to modern zoo design wasn't the habitat-based exhibits (as other zoological designers were already working with those concepts) but in framing the zoo as a good place for animals even though it's intrinsically focused on the people attending and not the animals in stock. After a brief dalliance about how fish in aquariums are still sourced from the oceans (which is a tad awkward), Rothfels is done.

*Savages and Beasts* is advertised as a kind of Carl Hagenbeck biography, but that's not really the case. Rothfels doesn't take the traditional path of starting with someone's parents or with their birth; instead, he starts with a treatise on the philosophy behind zoos and if they're inherently good or not. That's kind of ballsy, and I can respect him for it. He never tells us where Hagenbeck was born, what his personal life was like, or anything like that; this book was about his business and the various trains of thought that depart form that station. I thought that Rothfels weaved together different kinds of academic tangents pretty well and even if I didn't agree with a lot of what he said (more on that in the next paragraph), I felt the distribution of it was pretty well balanced. We hear about ancient history, we hear about ethnographers obsessing over people show subjects, and more out-of-bounds topics, but everything feels pretty well-contained and relevant. It's not the book that you expect, but it's intricate and proportionate. We did get a little content about what Rothfels thought of Hagenbeck as a person, and it seemed kind of nuanced - he concluded that he was both a shrewd businessman and a lover of animals, and that while you can't deny that love, he didn't always succeed in doing what was best either - and's fair, fairer than some of his takes on other topics...

Despite writing a whole books about their "birth," Rothfels is not really a fan of the zoo. You can tell that in the introduction when he claims that zoos are mostly unsatisfying to most people. That seems pretty biased to me - objectively, how could zoological institutions run for hundreds of years as businesses that need to make a profit from people paying entrance fees to stay afloat when everyone finds them unsatisfying? - and he even argues that the moment when people have special moments with animals - say, when they make eye contact - is the moment when the illusion of the zoo or whatever breaks down and you realize what an inhumane thing it is. I think Rothfels is kind of off-base here; sure, you've got people (like those he mentions) who are obnoxious and rude and may even throw things at animals, but that behavior is not encouraged or even allowed in many places. Maybe this is a result of Rothfels writing this book in 2002 and me reading it in 2025, but I don't think that the cultural implications he's getting at here are as damning as he says. But he likes to throw his shade, even on other academics; "zoological historians have generally been more interested in an antiquarian task of... exotic animals... historians of culture have been far more successful in examining the meaning [of those animals]" (20). He has something against zoos, and it may have something to do with the c-word (colonialism, the word you can't seem to have a historical discussion without nowadays). Or maybe not. I just felt like he came into this book with a biased view and while I'm not defending all the actions that have taken place in the past (or in the present, as there's still a bear pit here in the United States and that's depressing), the arguments just don't seem to be coming from a good place. He also neglects to talk about how Hagenbeck compensated his people show subjects; now, he doesn't try to paint them as enslaved, but I wonder if he purposely left that out of the narrative (and, I believe, the otherwise in-depth footnotes) as to not dredge up forgiveness for Hagenbeck. Now, I'm not saying that what Carl Jr. did was moral, but that's a weird detail to leave out and I'm not sure why the author would do that.

Now, regardless of how I felt about some things, Rothfels' "revelation" at the end of the book was well led-up to, made me think, and will probably stick with me for quite a while. Rothfels' writing was good too - it was very smooth, and like I alluded to earlier, it moved through different topics quickly yet in a way that threaded them together - so I could definitely respect it. And Rothfels cited a Kafka short story, "A Report to the Academy," which is about an ape who somehow gains sentience, frequently, helping to bridge the gap between his reality and ours with some literature, which is a clever technique for nonfiction to us. I haven't read that Kafka story before and am not particularly intrigued by it, but it was a good things to reference throughout the book - it gave *Savages and Beasts* some depth it might not have had otherwise, in a weird way.

At the end of the day, this book was well-written but didn't exactly deliver me what I wanted with the unbiased take I wanted. I also haven't yet captured how there were parts in this book where I was just kind of bored, and I'm not sure how much the timelines and everything will stick in my head - but the main themes will, and I think that matters. This is a good book that I kind of want to give 7.5/10 because of the writing, but I think I have to give it a 7/10 because, like I said, a few parts (namely in the middle third) kind of took me out of it and I would've appreciated more harder details about Hagenbeck's life. Anyways, thanks for reading this review; I hope to get more reviews about animal-based books out there, and I know I have a few scientific ones in addition to another book from this John Hopkins University Press series about animals in the upper echelon of French culture; take care, and try to remember Hagenbeck's vision and what you think it stood for the next time you visit a zoo...

[Heather Browning · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a richly detailed historical account of the rise of modern zoos, focussing on the influence of Carl Hagenbeck (often considered the 'father' of modern zoo design). It calls into question some of the common received wisdom about his influence and motives, examining his work as an animal dealer and manager of ethnographic exhibitions. Rothfels explores the ways in which the presentation of animals and the narratives surrounding this can influence (and be influenced by) a range of cultural perspectives on and relationships to animals. A little too heavy on the historical detail for me, but definitely an important alternative account to what is often seen in works of zoo history.

[Yenta Knows · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read about 10 pages. Completely bored.

[mantareads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rothfels writes ably, and the anecdotes he chooses (likely from a formidable mountain of archival material) are illuminating, poignant and at times hilarious. Using Carl Hagenbeck's "people shows", Rothfels argues that this "father of the modern zoo" did not so much pioneer the concept of the 'open zoo' (directors of various major zoos were already devising similar techniques of exhibiting animals by the time Hagenbeck opened his supposedly novel zoo in Hamburg), so much as the narratives around animals in captivity; his exhibits were one of the first to suggest that animals could perhaps live better lives in captivity than in the savage, brutish wilderness. Rothfels' greatest strength, his citation of so much evidence to buttress his points, is perhaps his greatest weakness as well. at times the quotations, diagrams, pictures he cites to illustrate a seemingly innocuous point threatens to obscure the very point itself.

finally, what I found most problematic and disappointing was that Rothfels doesn't actually discuss the modern zoo per se. the whole book serves to outline the birth of the _concept_ of the modern zoo, more accurately speaking.

This is particularly telling (and damning) when Rothfels states in the CONCLUSION of his book that "this is not the place to explore at length the history of the zoo in the twentieth century". I had to stop reading for a moment. I was dumbfounded. what constitutes the titular "modern" zoo then, for a book published in 2002?!? As with several other academic books the title of Rothfels' work doesn't deliver (at least directly and crisply) what its title seemed at first to promise.

nevertheless, a decent insight into the life and times and exhibits of a very interesting man and his people shows.

[Al Price · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting, and between the heady detail and the bias I feel like I'm reading in it, I quit.

[Rachel (Sfogs) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was very interesting, but the author's bias against zoos came through very obviously.
Which is fine, but it was rather distracting.