Book Review: Through the Lion Gate - A History of the Berlin Zoo

At the beginning of the Second World War, the Berlin Zoo was the jewel of the German capital, to say nothing of the most revered and highly esteemed zoo in the world.  At the end of the War, it was a charnel house and a wasteland, the bombed out ruin of what had once been one of the most magnificent zoos ever built.  The story of the birth, growth, death, and rebirth of that institution is told captivatingly by Gary Bruce in his Through the Lion Gate: A History of the Berlin Zoo.

While every zoo has its animal stories, not every zoo has the political and sociological stories of the Berlin Zoo, and it is upon these themes that Bruce focuses most heavily (I myself would have enjoyed reading a bit more about the animals, not instead of the stories that he does share, but in addition to).  The historical emphasis is a bit uneven, with most of the telling being focused on two major periods that make Berlin and other German zoos somewhat unique historically.  

First, there is the story of the anthropological exhibits, first conceived by the German animal dealer and collector Carl Hagenbeck, which brought peoples from around the world to Berlin and other European cities as essentially living museum displays (or, if you want to be blunt, as human zoo exhibits).  The stories of how these diverse people came to Germany, what their lives there were like, and how they experienced their travels is related with considerable detail.  I think that too often there is an attempt to brush away these stories as quirks of history instead of examining how they related to the broader context of the times that they were apart of.  Bruce does an excellent job of analyzing this period of the Zoo's history with respect and introspect.

Secondly, Bruce (using extensive access to archives not previously analyzed by historians) explores the relationship between the Zoo and the Nazi Party, including its eventual expulsion of the Jewish members who helped build the Berlin Zoo into the incredible institution which had become the envy of the world.  Lutz Heck, the Zoo's director (described in The Zookeeper's Wife, portrayed less-accurately in its film adaptation) was an early member of the Party and placed his facility at the disposal of Hitler's regime.  From banning Jewish members to trying to emphasis Germany's perceived superiority through the "recreation" of extinct primordial "pure" German animals, Heck was an enthusiastic participant in the ideology of the Reich.  Not surprisingly, in the years after the War his legacy has become an increasingly problematic one for the Zoo.

Less emphasis is given on the immediate postwar era, when the rebuilt Berlin Zoo had to compete with the upstart rival across the Wall in Russian-occupied East Berlin (though The Zookeepers' War by Jan Mohnhaupt is an excellent recount of those years).

Compared to other zoo history books which I've read, such as William Bridge's Gathering of Animals (Bronx Zoo) and Isobel Charman's The Zoo (London Zoo), there was less focus on the animal side of operations in this book that I'd expected.  This is a bit of a shame, because as one of the world's largest and richest zoos, Berlin's collection saw a variety of species seldom or never before seen in Europe, and it would have been interesting to learn more about those animals, how they came to Germany and how they lived there.  Berlin is a unique zoo, historically speaking, and perhaps it's better that Bruce focuses on that uniqueness.  

A laundry list of interesting animals and cute stories would be very fun for a zoo enthusiast to read.  At the same time, it might also distract from the story that needs to be told - how, like any other cultural institution, a zoo can reflect its nation's identity and politics.  And sometimes, that reflection can show something pretty dark.

Through the Lion Gate: A History of the Berlin Zoo at Amazon.com