dancing bear
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A dancing bear is a bear that has been trained to perform dance-like movements on command . Performances with trained brown bears in public places and for closed societies were common in Europe from the Middle Ages to the first decades of the 20th century. The practice, which is forbidden almost everywhere as animal cruelty , still exists today in isolated cases in southeast and eastern Europe and with sloth bears in India.
history
Bears have been worshiped and tamed in hunting rituals since the Mesolithic . Its magical meaning is expressed in numerous northern European and northern Asian myths. In Finland there was an idea that the bear only attacks because the soul of an evil person got into it. In Siberia, the prudence of the bear was explained by the fact that a human turned into him. Yakuts and other Siberian hunter peoples viewed the bear as a forest spirit. Drumming shamans prepared to hunt him. Only men were allowed to eat his meat, and his bones had to be carefully collected and placed high up in a tree or on a wooden rack in the forest. There were numerous peoples around the northern polar region who performed a bear dance: in North America, for example, the Algonquin , Tlingit and Kwakiutl , in northern Fennoscandinavia the Sami and in Siberia the Yakuts, Chukchi and Yukagirs . In the bear dance, the men dressed in bearskin or at least put on the bear's scalp to create a unity between humans and animals. Some North American Indians performed bear dances with bearskin masks until the colonization.
In medieval Christian art, bears were considered to be beasts associated with the devil. The display of trained bears, which has been handed down in Europe since antiquity and is backed up by written sources and illustrations throughout the Middle Ages, lives from the idea of the dangerousness of the wild animal, which is conquered by something as gentle as music and a transformation from a magical-animalistic one participates in a cultural being. In fact, the supposed dance of the bear to the music is based on a deception of the audience, which is also aimed at the Indian snake charmer , who plays a deaf cobra on the wind instrument pungi .
On the consular diptychs of the Eastern Roman general Areobindus from 506 and Anastasius from 517, who was Eastern Roman consul that year , bears can be seen being tempted by jugglers and acrobats. The acrobats use long poles to jump over the attacking bears. A drawing by Hans Burgkmair from 1493 shows a dancing bear standing upright, leaning with his left paw on a stick to which he is chained with his muzzle, while his right paw hangs limply. The painter's coat of arms was decorated with two bear heads. His work is typical of the preference for genre scenes at the time. Burgkmair's motif was repeated by the graphic artist Hans Weiditz , who in 1513 gave a woodcut the title “Fahrendes Volk mit Tanzbär” and in 1521 illustrated the letter K from the children's alphabet of Augsburg with a dancing bear. This dancing bear, leaning on a stick, still appears around 1650 on an anonymous copperplate engraving contained in Iohannes Ionstonus, Historia Naturalis de Quadrupedibus . Here a dancing bear leader in a Roman robe directs two bears on chains: one standing with a stick and one seated with a hat between his bent front paws. So-called breeding rods, which are connected to the bear's nose ring or necklace, belonged to a presumably old tradition of bear leaders, which was widespread in the Middle Ages and in Eastern Europe to the present day. A woodcut in a work by the Swedish Bishop Olaus Magnus from 1555 shows Lithuanian dancing bears that are carried with "breeding rods" on nose rings.
The medieval dancing bear keepers were traveling showmen who, with dishonorable trick players, tightrope walkers and jokers, formed a little-respected colorful troupe and appeared in a city for a few days. Trained dogs, monkeys or rabbits were shown in the same way. In addition to begging for entertainment in front of ordinary people, performances were also allowed to take place in town halls and in front of nobles at court. This emerges from the old French Roland song, written at the end of the 11th century , as well as from the old Swedish Thidrek saga from the 13th century. In the latter story, the minstrel Isung sews the hero Vildiver, who has killed a bear and is now carrying its fur, into that fur. So they appear as a team of dancing bears, so that they are allowed to go undetected to the Wilzen king Osantrix and can kill him.
In Russia, the Skomorochen appeared as jugglers and bear leaders since the 11th century. More precise information about them has been available since the 16th century from reports by Western European travelers who were in Moscow. On one of his trips in 1526, the Austrian envoy Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486–1566) saw how bear guides and their animals froze to death in a particularly cold winter and remained lying on the roadside. At the court of the Russian Grand Duke , he and other ambassadors were invited to a house in which several bears were imprisoned, which were let out and presented one by one. Adam Olearius (1599–1671) writes in his Multiplied Newe Description of the Muscowitischen and Persischen Reyse , published in 1656, about "Bärendäntzer" who were on the road with "Comedianten" and "Bierfidlers". In the 16th century, Poles in particular traveled around Germany as dancing bear keepers. It is reported in the council decrees of several cities, including Nuremberg. What is recorded is the remuneration the Poles received in the drinking rooms in Leipzig (1585) and Rothenburg ob der Tauber (1597) and in the imperial palace in Linz (1732, 1735). From the beginning of the 15th century, the Roma from the Balkans had competed with the traveling Poles and Hungarians .
The usual accompanying instruments of the bear dance were drums such as the Daira frame drum in Romania and pipes. In addition, the musicians blew curved “trumpets” (trumpets) and the platter , a simple form of the bagpipe without a drone pipe , but with a shrill sound. The bear, led by a string on a nose ring, had to be driven with a whip. According to a leaflet from the 16th century, there were already some contemporaries who criticized a bear dance performed in this way as compulsive.
dressage
The bear is trained according to the behavioral psychological pattern of conditioning : While the bear is being presented with music, it is forced to follow a predetermined movement pattern with a heated iron plate, stitches and other tortures. After completing the dressage (“acquisition phase”), the music serves as a “conditioned stimulus” of the classical conditioning and triggers the pain-avoiding movement pattern that was conditioned by the positive and negative reinforcement with the iron plate. In addition, bears living in captivity often circle their own body axis with the head and shoulders when standing.
Cruelty to animals and animal welfare
One of the popular comparisons with animal species is: “He gets beaten like a dancing bear.” Because of the use of intense pain stimuli and the risk of injury, dressage is viewed as torture. Since dancing bears also have to wear a painful nose ring and are not housed, nourished and cared for in a manner appropriate to their species and behavior, the offense of animal cruelty is often fulfilled. Animal rights activists therefore advocate a ban on keeping and training dancing bears and try to buy the often sick or extremely behaviorally disturbed animals free.
The dressage method has been banned in Bulgaria since 1998, but it still exists, especially among Roma families; there the dancing bear attitude has a long tradition. The animal welfare association Vier Pfoten founded a reserve in Beliza , where 23 former dancing bears live on wooded hills. It is no longer possible to release dancing bears into the wild because the bears are not shy about people and have not learned to assert themselves in nature.
distribution
Brown bears in German circuses are rarely reported because no more permits are issued for bears in circuses. After several accidents with bears, most recently in 2009, the Circus Universal Renz was refused further animal welfare approval.
Dancing bears can be found in Russia , Bulgaria , Romania , Serbia and Turkey , among others . There they serve as a circus attraction or are shown by traveling showmen on the street to collect money. Some tour operators of package tours and cruises to these countries also had demonstrations as a tourist attraction in 2005.
On June 21, 2007 n-tv reported that the last three dancing bears in Bulgaria are no longer in the hands of their former owners. The three bears were brought from Gezowo in Bulgaria to the Dancing Bear Park in Beliza, 500 kilometers away, which is run by Vier Pfoten .
In Romania, in the city of Brasov from the animal welfare organization World Society for the Protection of Animals , a similar reserve in Beliza for dancing bears and bears from non-welfare-friendly built (WSPA). In Romania, keeping and performing dancing bears is prohibited by law.
In Greece , an NGO called “Arcturos” set up a bear refuge in Nimphaeo at the end of the 1990s, and with the help of the government, all of the country's dancing bears were housed there.
In Croatia and Macedonia the dancing bear performance disappeared after the breakup of Yugoslavia . It has fallen sharply in Serbia, but is still practiced by Roma in the east of the country. According to Vier Pfoten, the rescue of Serbia's last dancing bears is currently underway. There are also said to be dancing bears in Albania , as well as quite a few in the former states of the Soviet Union .
In India and Sri Lanka -based sloth bears are smaller than brown bears, but they are feared because of numerous attacks on humans. According to reports from the 18th and 19th centuries, it was mainly the Nat showmen and dancers caste that were busy with the performance of bears, monkeys and snakes ( snake charmers ). In 1998, the performance of dancing bears was banned in India. Nevertheless, it is difficult to offer the social group of the Kalandars or Madari, who practice dressage and demonstration of sloth bears in India, an alternative livelihood. They draw attention to themselves with small hourglass drums and sing or tell stories.
At the end of 2017, the last two known dancing bears in Nepal were released in the Parsa game reserve , which borders the Chitwan National Park . There are also other bear protection facilities in which former dancing bears were housed.
Dancing bears in art and popular culture
In Christoph Ernst Steinbach's Complete German Dictionary Vel Lexicon Germanico-Latinum (Breslau, 1734, p. 66), the Latin equivalent ursus gesticulatorius is given for “dancing bear” . Dancing bears are common characters in 18th century fables . A common topos in the "dancing bear fables" of the 18th and 19th centuries is the dancing bear's urge for freedom, who breaks free from his chain, flees into nature and dances in front of bears there. Behind this are literary answers to the question of the role that the dancing bear assumes in the perception of the viewer: does he dance voluntarily or does he perform an act of dressage that is forced upon him? The poet Johann Georg Bock (1698–1762) dressed the question of freedom and bondage in 1743 in a fable about "stupid" pigs who move "naturally" (freely), while the supposedly "clever bear" only uses his dance moves Expresses bondage.
The dancing bear is the title of a fable by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , who in 1751 allowed a trained bear to return to its conspecifics in the forest. There the dancing bear believes that he is performing a great feat when he is dancing, which an old bear however appears to be a "sign of his lower spirit and his slave attitude". Poems and parables with the title The Dancing Bear were also written by Christoph von Schmid , Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1746) and Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel (1789).
Heinrich Heine adopts Atta Troll in his verse epic, which appeared in 1843 . A Midsummer Night's Dream the subject of the freedom-loving bear, to which he - according to the old idea - assumes a close connection to humans. Heine's dancing bear Atta Troll breaks free from the chain, flees to his cave in the mountains and dances in front of his young. Like Lessing, Heine understands the voluntary act of dressage as a slave mentality - the bear cannot shake off his dressage - and turns the fable into politics to criticize the relationship between the German nobility and the citizens. In the children's book Das Tanzbärenmärchen by Ulrich Mihr and the four-part marionette game from the Augsburger Puppenkiste (1984) based on it, the dancing bear leader Jakob and his companion, the dancing bear Atta Troll, play the main role. The story contains numerous allusions to Heine's work and includes the sad reality of the dancing bear dressage. With Mihr, too, the dancing bear is fixated on the role intended for him due to the training and his limited intelligence, although, as he says, he could actually be free. Peter Dickinson's youth book Tanzbär (English original The Dancing Bear , 1972) tells of the flight of the slave Silvester, the dancing bear Bubba and St. John in the 6th century. No matter where they are, the she-bear is fixated on dancing as soon as music starts playing.
A person disguised as a dancing bear plays a role in Smetana's comical opera The Bartered Bride . In the stage performances of Wilhelm Hauff's story Das Wirtshaus im Spessart and in the film of the same name from 1958, a singing juggler with a dancing bear leads through the plot.
Dancing Bear was the original name of the gold bears the company Haribo .
literature
- Bernd Brunner: Bear and Man: The Story of a Relationship. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3534230983
- Egon Wamers : Of bears and men. Berserkers, bear fighters and bear leaders in the early Middle Ages. In: ZAM Journal for Archeology of the Middle Ages, Volume 37, 2009, pp. 1–46
- Sonja Windmüller: Guided by the nose. Perspectives on the phenomenon ›dancing bear‹ (and at the same time also on dance). In: Vokus , 19/1, 2009, pp. 17-36
supporting documents
- ↑ Uno Harva : The religious ideas of the Altaic peoples . FF Communications N: o 125.Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1938, pp. 444f
- ↑ Egon Wamers, 2009, p. 14f
- ^ Wilhelm Molsdorf: Christian symbolism of medieval art. Karl W. Hiersemann, Leipzig 1926, p. 133
- ↑ Egon Wamers, 2009, p. 37f
- ^ Tilman Falk: To Burgkmair's drawing of the dancing bear: In: Berliner Museen, 12th year, issue 1, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 1962, pp. 1–3
- ↑ Egon Wamers, 2009, p. 39
- ↑ Otto Höfler : Kleine Schriften: Selected works on Germanic antiquity and the history of religion, on medieval literature, on Germanic linguistics as well as on cultural philosophy and morphology. Helmut Buske, Hamburg 1992, p. 29
- ↑ Walter Salmen : On the history of the bear drivers and the dancing bears. In: Gustaf Hilleström (Ed.): Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis III. ( Musikhistoriska museets skrifter 5th Festschrift for Ernst Emsheimer ) Musikhistoriska museet, Stockholm 1974, pp. 203–205
- ^ Oskar Weise: The popular comparisons in German dialects. In: Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mundarten, 16th year, 1921, pp. 169–179, here p. 175
- ^ WDR The Bear Center in Karacabey / Turkey ( Memento from November 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Belitsa Dancing Bear Park. Four paws
- ↑ Katrin Langhans: The bear in the backyard. reporterreisen.com
- ↑ Six brown bears disappear from the circus without a trace. Focus online, March 27, 2013
- ↑ Katja Schmidt: Sharp criticism of bear keeping. Frankfurter Rundschau, April 22, 2009
- ↑ Suffering ended - dancing bears in the protection park . n-tv, June 21, 2007
- ↑ Bernd Brunner, 2010, pp. 105f
- ↑ Bernd Brunner, 2010, p. 144; Thomas Williamson: The East India vade-mecum; or, Complete guide to gentlemen intended for the civil, military, or naval service of the hon. East India Company. Vol. 2. Black, Parry, and Kingsbury, London 1810, p. 414
- ↑ Atula Gupta: Unbearable life of the Dancing Bears. Earth Times, March 6, 2012
- ^ Communities for Conservation. ( Memento from June 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Wildlife Trust of India
- ↑ Bear rescue: We just saved Nepal's last two 'dancing bears'. World Animal Protection, December 22, 2017
- ↑ Sonja Windmüller, 2009, p. 22
- ↑ Winfried Woesler: Heine's dancing bear: Historical-literary studies on the "Atta Troll". Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1978, p. 149
- ^ Gerhard Höhn: Heine manual: time - person - work. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2004, p. 83
- ↑ Sonja Windmüller, 2009, p. 25
- ↑ Sonja Windmüller, 2009, p. 26
