The Zookeepers' War

September 2, 2019
Cold War Berlin bursts to life in this riveting, lively German bestseller chronicling the fierce rivalry between zoos on either side of the Iron Curtain by journalist Mohnhaupt. The feud raged between “avid animal collector” and veterinarian Heinz-Georg Klos, director of the West Berlin zoo, and his older counterpart in East Berlin’s Tierpark, the “passionate zoologist” Heinrich Dathe, who had dreamed of running a zoo since he was a child. The socialist government “did not want East Berliners traveling to the British sector to visit the zoo there... throwing their money at capitalism,” so it founded its own. Soon, the two zoos and their directors, “each an emblem of his city’s politics,” were engaged in intense competition. “For both men,” Mohnhaupt writes, “being a zoo director was more than a nine-to-five job; it was a calling.” Along with the human characters, a memorable array of four-legged figures includes Knautschke the hippo, so beloved that Berliners fed him cabbage when they had little to spare, and Chi Chi the panda, whose likeness became the logo for the World Wildlife Fund. Mohnhaupt is a keen guide to the difficulties of a divided Berlin and to the enchantment of a career devoted to wild animals.

September 15, 2019
The Cold War was fought by proxies, to be sure--but pandas and pangolins? An offbeat tale from the Cold War and a bestseller in Germany after its original publication in 2017. As journalist Mohnhaupt writes in his first book translated into English, Berlin's zoo animals, like its people, suffered terribly during World War II. After the war, in an occupied city isolated from the surrounding countryside, animals were valued even more, and two rival zoos, one in the Russian-governed eastern sector and the other in the Allied-governed west, sprang up. Over the years, each drew a steady stream of visitors--millions, in fact, and this in a (divided) city that, during the Cold War years, didn't draw many tourists. A rivalry developed, punctuated in the opening pages by an unseemly moment between the respective zoo directors: "One word led to another, and eventually a shoving match ensued between the two aging men--neither much taller than five foot five--right there among the elephants." The Berlin Zoo on one hand and the Tierpark on the other became the beneficiaries of an unlikely race for animal-keeping supremacy, and with plenty of near-comical turns--e.g., when the East German institution had to use capitalist shipping to send "four hyenas and six lions from its world-famous breeding center" to China in exchange for Siberian tigers. More fraught were efforts to keep elephants, the ostensible subject of the directors' brawl, and other exotic creatures. As Mohnhaupt notes, the East German zookeeper was fierce enough to keep the Stasi away, the secret police agency reasoning, by way of face-saving, that animal lovers were harmless. Meanwhile, his West German counterpart was shrewd at corralling huge sums of money that eventually made the Berlin Zoo "the world's most biodiverse." Reunification did little to stem the rivalry at first, writes the author, though the turf war has since simmered down. It's not quite a Bridge of Spies-level thriller, but there are plenty of unexpected, entertaining twists behind bars.

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October 1, 2019

August 2019 marked the 175th anniversary of the Berlin Zoo, which was among the most biodiverse in the world before World War II, and once again bears that distinction. Following the war, zookeepers in West Berlin rebuilt the Berlin Zoo from rubble and ruin, while a new zoo called Tierpark was being constructed on the former grounds of Friedrichsfelde Palace in East Berlin. Much can be understood about the challenges of postwar Germany by learning about the struggles facing zookeepers at the time: shortages of materials and food, the impact of the Berlin Wall, and the complexities of reunification. This work by Munich-based Mohnhaupt, translated smoothly by Frisch, provides detail on both the diplomatic and the competitive nature of the "animal arms race," the effort to best the other side of the Cold War by having the most exotic and appealing animals. Zoos are one of Germany's most popular recreational facilities, and Mohnhaupt makes a compelling case that, in divided Berlin, zoos reflected the feeling of being enclosed and the geopolitical realities of Cold War Germany. VERDICT Well researched and executed, this book will appeal to zoologists, zoo lovers, and readers interested in the history of postwar Germany.--Beth Dalton, Littleton, CO

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