Fritz (elephant)
Fritz († June 11, 1902 in Tours , France ) was an Asian elephant for the American circus company Barnum & Bailey . When the bull elephant could no longer be controlled, he was strangled in front of an audience. Its restored remains now belong to the Natural History Museum Tours and are kept in an outbuilding of the Museum of the Arts.
Life
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It is not known whether the bull elephant was captured as a wild animal in Asia or perhaps born in an American zoo. His age at the time of death was given by a newspaper as "80 years", which would have made him unusually old for an Asian elephant. His name is first found in the accounting books of the Hagenbeck wildlife store in Hamburg-St. Pauli from November 1873. Together with 250 other wild animals, including five other elephants, it was purchased for $ 4,000 from Phineas Taylor Barnum , the founder of the North American circus company Barnum & Bailey . Asian elephants are generally more easily trainable than African elephants. Dressage was marked by violence in those years. Elephant hooks and nails were the preferred hand tools of trainers . Fritz passed into the possession of James Antony Bailey and became famous for his feats. It measured 2.9 meters from floor to withers , its tusks reached a length of 1.5 meters, and the skin was five centimeters thick.
After an extensive tour of North America, his last big trip took him to France together with five other elephants , a larger tour through Europe was planned. In order to be able to transport Fritz across the Atlantic , he was tied up and hoisted onto a steamer using a crane . Like the other animals, he had to spend the crossing almost motionless. During such journeys, elephants were often victims of colic and seasickness. Some animals found death.
In Bordeaux , Fritz killed the circus worker who was charged with taking care of the elephant's daily foot care. Because of his dangerousness Fritz was chained to two other elephants from now on as a precaution. In June 1902 the circus reached the city of Tours with more than 65 carriages.
Death of the elephant
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After an evening performance in Tours on June 11, 1902, a festive farewell parade of the circus took place through the center of the city to the train station. Onlookers came from the surrounding villages to see the spectacle. Suddenly Fritz could no longer be tamed at Nicolas-Frumeaud-Platz and got completely out of control. Experts suspect that the trigger is musth , a hormone-related change in character that occurs periodically in bull elephants , which can lead to unpredictability and high levels of aggressiveness. The circus management decided to have the elephant killed. He was handcuffed with chains and ropes tied with lifting tools and put a noose around his neck. In front of the large crowd, including many children, circus workers began to strangle the elephant with a rope. His agony is said to have lasted three hours. The circus management donated the animal corpses to the city of Tours and moved on by train .
The way to fame
In order to prevent the carcass from deteriorating quickly, it was professionally dismantled by a skinner . After roughly cleaning the skeleton, a tanner prepared the elephant skin. Taxidermist Anatole Sautot from Nantes mummified the skin and stuffed it. Fritz was first exhibited in this form in the Natural History Museum on the Loire . The skeleton could be admired on the second floor of the museum. For reasons of space, the stuffed Fritz was moved to the former stables of the Museum of Fine Arts in Tours near the cathedral in 1910. The skeleton remained in place, but was completely destroyed in 1940 as a victim of flames during World War II.
In the mid-1970s, the stuffed elephant was in very poor condition. In 1977 it was finally restored by Bernard Boisselier, taxidermist in La Ville-aux-Dames . Since then it has been exhibited again in the former stable building, but now in a glass cage.
The American rapper Blaq commemorates the legendary Fritz with a music video .
literature
- Alexander Haufellner, Jürgen Schilfarth, Georg Schweiger: Elephants in the zoo and circus: Part 2: North America. Ed .: European Elephant Group. 1997.
- Jeannette Schmidt: Behavior of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in the zoo and circus - indicators for their sensitivity. Dissertation, dissertation from the University of Greifswald, 2006.
- Phineas Taylor Barnum: King Humbug. His life, told by himself. (= Aufbau-Taschenbuch. 1925) Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7466-1725-1 .
- Chr. Schulz: On the hunt for large animals for Hagenbeck. Publisher Deutsche Buchwerkstaetten, Leipzig 1926.
- Steve Claude: Quand Fritz l'éléphant joue la star aux Beaux-arts. In: La Nouvelle République du Center-Ouest, September 16, 2013.
- On a retrouvé l'éléphant Fritz, empaillé à Nantes. In: Presse Océan Nantes, December 14, 2015. [1] .
Individual evidence
- ^ Michel Petit: L'odyssée de Fritz l'éléphant. In: Le Magazine de la Touraine, number 17, 1986, pp. 3-14.
- ^ Fritz, seul dans sa cage en verre . In: La Nouvelle République du Center-Ouest . May 22, 2015, p. 11 (French, lanouvellerepublique.fr ).
- ↑ Music video: The legendary Fritz-Elephant In DA Room.