Knut (polar bear)

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Polar bear Knut in the Berlin Zoological Garden , 2008

Knut (born December 5, 2006 in Berlin ; † March 19, 2011 ibid) was a male polar bear (Ursus maritimus) who lived in the Berlin Zoological Garden .

The first polar bear birth in the Berlin Zoological Garden for more than 30 years initially met with large regional and very quickly international media coverage . The animal became one of the greatest attractions of the Berlin zoo. While around 70 polar bears have been born and raised largely unnoticed by the press since 1980 in Germany alone, the hand-raised Knut has become an international media phenomenon.

Life in the zoo

Knut at the age of three months, 2007

Knut's parents are the bear Tosca, who also lived in the Berlin Zoological Garden until her death on June 23, 2015, and the bear Lars. The father, who was born on December 12, 1993 and died on September 19, 2017, came from the Hellabrunn zoo in Munich and was handed over to the Neumünster zoo when his father Michi in Munich could have been dangerous when he reached sexual maturity. From there he came to Berlin, where he fathered Knut, and moved to Wuppertal Zoo in October 2009 . Tosca was born in Canada in 1986 , was previously held in the GDR state circus and belonged to Ursula Böttcher's polar bear group there .

Knut with animal keeper Thomas Dörflein

The 20-year-old polar bear gave birth to two male cubs on December 5, 2006 after a problem-free gestation period. It was the first polar bear birth in Berlin after 30 years. The mother did not take her offspring and one of the young died after four days. The remaining young animal, Knut, which weighed 810 grams at birth, was separated from Tosca and looked after by a team from the Berlin Zoo. It spent the first 44 days of life in an incubator . The young animal was looked after around the clock by animal keeper Thomas Dörflein (1963–2008), who moved into a room in the Berlin Zoological Garden in order to be able to provide Knut with food every four to six hours.

During an examination on March 15, 2007, Knut weighed 8.2 kilograms. In order to protect the animal in the first days of its life, the zoo administration had set a limit of eight kilograms for public presentation. Therefore, Knut was only officially presented to the public on March 23, at the age of 15 weeks and weighing nine kilograms. The very next day it attracted thousands of visitors.

On July 9, 2007, the zoo administration was forced to announce the end of the live shows with the young polar bear, as the polar bear, with a body weight of almost 50 kg, is now too heavy and too dangerous for the animal keeper acting as a " co-entertainer ".

Knut at the age of four, January 2011

On November 28, 2007 the Flensburger Tageblatt reported that Knut belongs to the Neumünster Zoo . Knut's father, Lars, had been on loan to Berlin from the Neumünster Zoo since 1999, and it had been contractually agreed that the first baby born - in this case Knut - belonged to the Neumünster Zoo. The director of the Berlin zoo, Bernhard Blaszkiewitz , confirmed the contract. On July 7th, 2009 an agreement between the Berlin Zoo and the Neumünster Zoo was announced. Knut stayed in the Berlin zoo, while the Neumünster zoo received a compensation payment of 430,000 euros.

From September 2009 to July 2010 Knut shared an outdoor enclosure with the polar bear Giovanna , who was about the same age and was housed in the Berlin Zoo during the renovation of the polar bear enclosure in Hellabrunn Zoo. Then he was housed together with the three adult polar bears Tosca, Nancy and Katjuscha on the large polar bear outdoor enclosure.

On March 19, 2011, Knut, who was alone in the outdoor area of ​​the polar bear enclosure of the Berlin zoo, died in front of the zoo visitors. Before that he had turned in circles several times, his legs began to tremble and finally he fell into the pool of water, in which he then floated lifelessly. The animal was four years old. In the wild, polar bears can live to be 25 to 30 years old, but in captivity they can live to be well over 30 years old.

On March 22, 2011, the first result of the section was announced that Knut had suffered from a brain disease. You have "noticed significant changes in the brain". These could be seen as the reason for Knut's sudden death, according to the head press spokeswoman for the Berlin zoo. On April 1, the Berlin Zoo and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) stated that "drowning" was the cause of Knut's death. Because of an inflammation of the brain caused by an infection, he fell into the water and drowned. The spinal cord was also pathologically damaged by the inflammation. Due to the massive inflammation, the polar bear would have died after some time even without falling into the water basin. It was investigated whether the three bears who lived with Knut in the facility were also sick with this infection. Since no specific pathogen (virus, bacterium or parasite) could be found in the brain tissue at any time, the samples were further examined by various research institutions in the following years. In 2015, a special form of autoimmune disease was identified as the cause of encephalitis , the so-called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis . This disease was previously only known in humans.

The Knut phenomenon

Media coverage

Since January 30, 2007, around two months before the official performance date, the regional television and radio company rbb has been reporting at least weekly about the young polar bear's zoo life. A weblog and online archives with photos and films about Knut supplemented this regional reporting.

On March 23, 2007, Knut was officially presented to the public in the Berlin Zoological Garden by Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel together with the zoo director Blaszkiewitz. Around 500 journalists from Germany and abroad came to attend. The public radio broadcaster rbb and the private news channels N24 and n-tv reported live. The Federal Environment Ministry took over a sponsorship and suggested Knut as a symbolic figure for the 9th UN Nature Conservation Conference in May 2008 in Bonn. On April 10, 2008, Deutsche Post AG issued a postage stamp entitled Preserving Nature Worldwide - Knut the Polar Bear . The surcharge (55 + 25 cents) appeared in the series “For environmental protection”; With the surcharge proceeds from the Knut stamp, the Federal Environment Ministry supports environmental and nature conservation projects on the subject of biodiversity .

Knut on the small outdoor area in autumn 2007

Although Knut is the first polar bear cub in the Berlin Zoological Garden in 30 years, more than 70 polar bears have been born and around 69 animals have been raised in Germany alone since 1980 (the beginning of records in the polar bears studbook) - largely unnoticed by the press. Against this background, the national to international media interest in the fate of the young bear, who had been cast out by his mother, was surprisingly high. Infotainment providers and tabloid magazines in particular took advantage of Knut's popularity.

First, the rbb reported regularly using film material that was shot by animal keepers exclusively for the Berliner Abendschau . The print media then used these reports for their local and regional editions. For example, tabloids, including Bild , BZ and Berliner Kurier , but also daily newspapers such as Der Tagesspiegel reported almost daily on the development of the polar bear and the relationship with its keeper. Since mid-March, newspapers and television stations around the world have been reporting on the young polar bear. B. in France , China , the USA , Japan , Uzbekistan , Ireland , South Africa and India . The individual episodes of a documentary about the little polar bear produced by the rbb have been broadcast weekly on Saturday morning by ARD throughout Germany since March 24, 2007 . The first episode alone was seen by almost a million viewers, which corresponds to a market share of almost 15 percent. In the English-speaking world, Knut was often called Cute Knut ("Niedlicher Knut" or "Süßer Knut") by the press and fans , and some German broadcasters gave him the nickname "Knuddel-Knut". The title cover of the international edition of Vanity Fair from May 2007 was a picture of Knut in a photo montage together with a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio . In the German edition of April 2007, Knut had its own cover story.

In April 2008, the media painted a different picture when Knut killed the carp that were cleaning his moat of algae. In the center of public interest was the polar bear, which has meanwhile outgrown the child pattern , then again due to the sudden death of his carer Thomas Dörflein on September 22, 2008.

Knut's popularity was taken from the start by various animal welfare and animal rights organizations as an opportunity to use his example to criticize the keeping of animals in zoos in general, and in particular with solitary wild animals such as polar bears. This continued after the crowd's sudden death in March 2011.

The then scientific director of the zoological garden, Bernhard Blaszkiewitz, defended the hand-rearing and husbandry conditions of Knut and rejected allegations that the animal had died due to a stressful situation caused by husbandry. This was confirmed by more detailed investigations into Knut's cause of death.

The branded article "Knut"

In order to secure exclusive rights for the merchandising , the Berlin zoo administration released “Knut, the polar bear” and the polar bear logo for the climate protection initiative “Respect Habitats. Knut ”( English for“ respect living spaces. Knut ”) as trademarks . Merchandising products with "Knut" motifs, e.g. B. on T-shirts, mugs and tin postcards accounted for a not inconsiderable share of the zoo's turnover (cf. the marketing of the one year younger, also hand-raised polar bear Flocke in Nuremberg and the children's book “ Der kleine Eisbär ” from the 1980s ). The share price of the zoo, which has been listed since 1841, rose briefly to almost double from mid-March to early April 2007 as a result of Knut's popularity. Originally, the Berlin zoo administration expected additional income of five million euros for 2007, about half of which from the additional 500,000 visitors expected. On July 5, 2007, however, the millionth visitor since the first Knut presentation was welcomed.

In the longstanding legal dispute over the brand name, the Berlin Zoo won on September 16, 2013 before the Court of the European Union against a British company. Only the zoo is allowed to use the brand name.

Music about Knut

Musicians compose and publish songs on the subject of Knut. On the one hand, there are children's songs in which the cliché of the “cuddly bear” is sung, which Knut corresponded almost perfectly in his first weeks of life. This in turn provokes caricatures of these songs. In addition, critical voices are heard in some of the songs, which translate the topic into other contexts. Numerous music videos with Knut songs are available on the Internet portals YouTube or MyVideo .

Commercial music projects that have taken on the subject of Knut are among others

Knut monuments

Knut tomb
Knut's tomb at the In den Kisseln cemetery in Spandau

At the Spandau cemetery In den Kisseln , Knut has been commemorated with a marble memorial stone in the style of a tomb since December 2011 ; This is right next to Thomas Dörflein's grave and was financed by a private initiative.

Knut the dreamer
Monument Knut the dreamer for the polar bear Knut in the Berlin Zoological Garden ( bronze and granite ),
sculptor Josef Tabachnyk

After an artist competition held at the end of 2011, the Knut the Dreamer memorial was erected in the zoological garden based on a design by Josef Tabachnyk . The award-winning monument consists of a bronze- cast polar bear lying on two ice floes formed from white granite . The stones weigh a total of 800 to 900 kilograms, more than 100 kilograms of bronze were processed for the bronze figure in the Lenz foundry in Nuremberg . The three monument parts were assembled by a stonemason in Nuremberg , then the complex was transported to Berlin. The base for the bear was finally cast right in the zoo. The work should be completed by early September 2012. At that time, however, the director of the Berlin Zoological Garden announced that the statue would not be inaugurated until the end of October 2012 due to scheduling difficulties. On October 24, 2012, Bernhard Blaszkiewitz and Josef Tabachnyk jointly unveiled the 1.40 meter long and 1.15 meter wide figure next to the polar bear enclosure. In 2012, 1000 replicas of the monument with a height of 11 cm were made by the Friends of the Berlin Zoological Garden and sold as souvenirs in the Zoological Garden. A commemorative medal with the motif of the memorial had already appeared in spring 2012. The memorial medal is made of silver-plated copper and has a diameter of 32.5 mm.

Exhibition as a preparation

Knut in the vestibule of the Berlin Natural History Museum , March 2013

A preparation made from Knut's real fur, a plastic body and glass eyes was exhibited between February 16 and May 5, 2013 in the Berlin Natural History Museum. More than 150,000 visitors viewed the preparation during the three-month exhibition period. Between June 13th and September 1st, 2013 Knut was presented at the National Natural History Museum of the Netherlands , the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden .

Since July 28, 2014 Knut has been on display again in the Berlin Natural History Museum as part of a special exhibition on "Highlights of the Art of Preparation". The museum has already won world championship titles for taxidermy and the stuffed Knut is said to be the center of attraction of this exhibition for several years.

literature

  • Hubert Bücken (Ed.): Knut - a spring fairy tale. The little polar bear cub from Berlin. Zeitgeist media. Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-926224-47-7 .
  • Anneliese Klumbies: KNUT. The bear, the city and the zoo. Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-041516-6 .

Web links

Commons : Knut  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Eisbär Knut is dead. In: FAZ .net. March 19, 2011, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  2. ↑ The mother of the polar bear Knut is dead . In: Berliner Morgenpost , June 23, 2015
  3. ↑ Polar bear Lars is dead: Knut's father put to sleep. In: BZ , September 19, 2017
  4. ↑ Susanne Kröck: Knut, the last one! The zoo quietly abolished the popular show. In: Berliner Kurier . July 9, 2007, accessed September 11, 2015 .
  5. ↑ The Knut Show is over and over. In: Welt Online. July 9, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  6. ↑ Eisbär Knut remains a Berliner. In: Rheinische Post online. July 7, 2009, archived from the original on January 1, 2015 ; Retrieved March 19, 2011 .
  7. ↑ Knut died . In: BZ Online , March 19, 2011
  8. ↑ Press release Zoo Berlin March 22, 2011 , accessed on March 22, 2011
  9. ↑ Knut died by drowning on spiegel.de, accessed on April 1, 2011
  10. ↑ H. Prüss et al .: Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis in the Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) Knut Scientific Reports (2015): 5, 12805; doi: 10.1038 / srep12805
  11. ↑ a b The death of the polar bear Knut has been solved. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 27, 2015, accessed on August 27, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Knut will be available to lick off soon. In: Welt Online. February 27, 2008, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  13. ↑ Karin Linke, leader of the polar bear stud book at the Rostock Zoo
  14. ^ "Knut Day" in Berlin as polar bear cub goes public. In: CHINA daily. March 24, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  15. ^ Matthew Schofield: Around the globe, polar bear lovers go nuts for Knut. In: Houston Chronicle. March 24, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  16. ↑ Polar bear cub Knut to meet world's media. In: Ireland On-Line. March 23, 2007, archived from the original on December 1, 2007 ; accessed on March 19, 2011 (English).
  17. ^ "Knut Day" in Berlin as polar bear cub goes public. In: Zee News (India). March 24, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  18. ↑ Zoo has “Knut” protected as a trademark. In: Focus Online . March 25, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  19. ↑ Knut kills carp - zoo visitors outraged. In: spiegel.de. April 6, 2008, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  20. ↑ Knut-Tod: Zoo rejects allegations of bullying - Knut, the little polar bear . In: Focus Online , March 21, 2011
  21. ↑ Eisbär Knut brings additional income in the millions to Berlin Zoo. In: Wirtschaftswoche. July 5, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  22. ↑ One million visitors to Knut. In: Welt Online . July 5, 2007, accessed March 19, 2011 .
  23. ↑ Christoph Stollowsky: Berlin Zoo wins legal dispute over Knut's marketing rights. But now it's Knut. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 17, 2013, accessed September 30, 2013 .
  24. ↑ a b Croissants for Knut . On: tagesspiegel.de , December 5, 2011
  25. ↑ Germany: A Bear Will Dream in bronze. In: New York Times . January 24, 2012, accessed January 9, 2014 .
  26. ↑ Knut the polar bear receives a memorial
  27. ↑ Knut won't come until summer. In: Berliner Kurier . January 18, 2012, accessed June 3, 2012 .
  28. ↑ "The paw comes well". Knut is done. The bronze polar bear is already lying on the granite ice floes in a Nuremberg foundry. In: Berliner Morgenpost , August 7, 2012, p. 14
  29. ↑ Berlin Zoo gets its "eternal" Knut. In: Berliner Morgenpost. August 7, 2012, accessed August 8, 2012 .
  30. ↑ The bronze statue of the polar bear Knut is finished. In: BZ August 7, 2012, accessed on August 8, 2012 .
  31. ↑ Bronze statue of the polar bear Knut from October 24th at the Berlin Zoo. In: Märkische Allgemeine . September 7, 2012, archived from the original on February 11, 2013 ; Retrieved September 17, 2012 .
  32. ↑ Jens Twiehaus: The dreaming Knut - monument of the polar bear unveiled. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. October 24, 2012, accessed October 24, 2012 .
  33. ↑ Knut returns to the zoo. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 3, 2012, accessed June 3, 2012 .
  34. ↑ Knut monument adorns the special issue on the occasion of 775 years of Berlin ( Memento from December 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  35. ↑ Annette Kögel: Knut comes to the Natural History Museum as a preparation. In: Der Tagesspiegel. February 11, 2013, accessed February 12, 2013 .
  36. ↑ Presentation of the polar bear "Knut". Museum of Natural History, archived from the original on April 12, 2013 ; Retrieved March 17, 2013 .
  37. ↑ Stuffed Knut can only be seen until Sunday. In: Berliner Morgenpost. April 30, 2013, accessed May 16, 2013 .
  38. ↑ a b Eisbär Knut is now Dutch. In: Der Tagesspiegel . June 4, 2013, archived from the original on June 9, 2013 ; Retrieved June 6, 2013 .
  39. ↑ Stuffed polar bear Knut can now be seen again in Berlin. In: Berliner Morgenpost . July 28, 2014, accessed August 1, 2014 .
  40. ↑ Video: Freshly combed and blow-dried: Knut the polar bear is ready for a museum. In: Spiegel Online . July 29, 2014, accessed August 1, 2014 .