Antonio Alpi

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Menagerie of Antonio Alpi, Schmuckblatt 1798/99; Nuremberg City Museum
The two elephants of the Alpi Menagerie, around 1800; Germanic National Museum Nuremberg

Antonio Alpi , also Antonio Albi or Antonio Alpy (* before 1784 in Parma ; † after 1816) was an Italian animal showman and owner of an Indian elephant couple , which caused a stir in Vienna .

Life

In 1784 Antonio Alpi was traveling with several reindeer from Lapland to France , presumably to take them to the veterinary school in Alfort near Paris . There, Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton , a former employee of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon , was involved in the rearing and keeping of non-native animal species in France. For the following years, Alpi was assigned to the veterinary school as the supervisor of the menagerie there , which was closed in 1787. A few years later, Alpi was together with a Georg Meyer as the owner of a curiosity show in German-speaking countries.

In 1798 he showed an animal show that he had put together in London , which also included two elephants and which he sold in 1799 to the imperial zoo in Schönbrunn near Vienna , which had been open to the public since 1765 . Around 1800 Alpi moved with a newly acquired collection of animals through northern and southern Germany, through Switzerland and northern Italy, where he stayed with his menagerie in Turin in 1802 . In 1808 he sold his holdings to Louis Bonaparte , King of the Netherlands, who set up a menagerie that Alpi looked after until 1810; after the end of the Dutch reign of Bonaparte in 1810, it was dissolved. In 1814 Alpi owned an Indian rhinoceros which he had shipped from England to Rotterdam .

After 1816, Antonio Alpi's track is lost; Johann Alpi's animal show, which was hosted in Weimar in 1821 and attended by Goethe , could have belonged to his son.

Alpis elephant couple

The total of 27 animals in Alpi's hiking menagerie included two Indian elephants from Bengal , a bull and a cow. Various sources report on their stay in Schönbrunn. When they arrived in 1799, the pair of elephants was noted as expensive, but also attractive to paying visitors. In 1805 it was reported that the two pachyderms took pleasure in music and valued fragrances. The sometimes not very discreet behavior of the elephants, generally regarded as chaste, was particularly attentive to the Viennese and ensured the couple continued popularity. The bull died in 1811 at the age of 18 after an inflammation of the stomach; he had devoured a large number of copper coins thrown at him. It remained stuffed in the zoological museum, its skeleton came to the imperial-royal veterinary school. The cow died in 1845; she was 53 years old.

literature

  • Stephan Oettermann : The elephant curiosity. An Elephantographia Curiosa . Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-8108-0203-4 , pp. 151-154.
  • Annelore Rieke-Müller, Lothar Dittrich : Out and about with wild animals. Wandering menageries between instruction and commerce 1750–1850 . Basilisken-Presse, Marburg 1999, ISBN 3-925-34752-6 , pp. 27-30.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annelore Rieke-Müller, Lothar Dittrich: On the way with wild animals. Wandering menageries between instruction and commerce 1750–1850 (1999), pp. 27, 30.
  2. ↑ Stephan Oettermann: The curiosity of the elephant. Eine Elephantographia Curiosa (1982), pp. 152f.
  3. ↑ Annelore Rieke-Müller, Lothar Dittrich: On the way with wild animals. Wandering menageries between instruction and commerce 1750–1850 (1999), p. 29.
personal data
SURNAME Alpi, Antonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Albi, Antonio; Alpy, Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian animal showman and owner of a pair of Indian elephants
DATE OF BIRTH before 1784
PLACE OF BIRTH Parma
DATE OF DEATH after 1816