Garnier Elephants

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The two elephants from Garnier , named after their owner, a Berlin showman and animal dealer, caused quite a stir in 1819 and 1820, as they were killed one after the other and in different places through masonry with cannon shots.

background

The execution of Mademoiselle Garnier's elephant in Geneva on May 31, 1820

The showman Garnier traveled all over Europe with his animal shows . For his elephants he had designed special wagons especially for transport, which secured the animals as they walk. The two pachyderms got out of control in the course of their presentations - one in Venice , the other a year later in Geneva - and, as they could not be tamed again, were each shot with a cannonball. The notion of meeting runaway and unrestrained elephants with a cannon was quite common in the 19th century; For example, the elephant von Murten fell victim to this tactic in 1866.

Life and death in Venice

The first elephant († 1819 in Venice) came from one of the last court menageries , set up by Frederick I of Württemberg . After his death in 1816 and a year marked by bad harvests and famine , Frederick's successor Wilhelm I considered exclusive animal husbandry, which involved three elephants as well as a large number of large predators, to be too expensive, and the menagerie was given to circus owners in November of the same year and animal showmen sold all over Europe. One of the elephants had meanwhile been killed and the carcass had been assigned to the royal collection of natural objects. Another elephant, along with a leopard, a bear and other exotic animals such as monkeys and parrots, was purchased from the Berlin animal showman Garnier, who managed to train the wild and unruly animal to be a learned elephant who was able to perform all kinds of tricks. Over the next two years, Garnier toured various fairs in Germany and Italy with the elephant.

The traveler and naturalist Georg von Martens (1788–1872), founder of the Moosherbar in Stuttgart , saw the elephant in Vicenza and left a footnote about his death in Venice on March 16, 1819. The elephant, according to Martens, resisted his embarkation for Milan ; irritated by blows from his guards, he smashed his hut and pelted the men with the boards. While trying to lure the hungry animal with food, one of the guards died. Frightened by a volley of rifles from the rushed military, the elephant fled and ran into the town to the Castello district , where he got stuck in the hopeless street of Calle del Forno and then broke into a house. Its stairs collapsed under the heavy animal as it tried to climb it. After further useless rifle volleys from his pursuers, the elephant stepped through the wooden door of the church of Sant'Antonin and holed up behind the prayer chairs. There he was hunted down with a cannon through a hole specially broken in the church wall, the bullet of which got stuck in the large body. The news of the event was shouted in Venice and spread through newspapers across Europe. The elephant's skeleton and stuffed skin ended up in the natural history cabinet of the University of Padua .

Life and death in Geneva

In addition to the Württemberg elephant, Garnier owned a second († 1820 in Geneva), which came from Bengal and which he had bought in London in 1814 . The animal was gentle and docile and had only one tusk. Garnier left it to his daughter after he had bought the bad luck elephant from Stuttgart.

In May 1820 the elephant showed his tricks to Mademoiselle Garnier in Geneva. He had been unusually restless from target practice in a garrison near the show booth. On leaving the city, he suddenly panicked and was allowed to run back into the city in the hope that it would be easier to catch him there again, which the mademoiselle also managed by luring him into the courtyard of Bastion Hollande with delicacies . There the elephant began to riot by knocking over ammunition wagons and carriages , turning the towering wheels with its trunk and throwing cannonballs around. Although the garrison commander and the hurried mayor had decided to let the elephant let off steam, Mademoiselle Garnier insisted on killing the animal, possibly remembering the devastation of the previous year in Venice. Multiple additions of poison in increased doses, including arsenic , which the animal consumed willingly, were unsuccessful. When the onlookers began to gather more and more, it was decided to kill the elephant with a cannon. A hole was broken in the courtyard wall and a cannonball was shot in the head of the curious animal rushing up. The skeleton and the skin were taken to the Natural History Museum, the meat was distributed among the population, who reportedly received it well despite the poison it contained.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martens (1824) II, pp. 319-322
  2. ↑ The church of Sant 'Antonio mentioned in the source does not exist in Venice, but there is one called Sant'Antonin in the immediate vicinity of Calle del Forno in Castello ; the information is based on a typographical or printing error.
  3. ↑ Oettermann (1982) pp. 162-164. In Murten, elephant meat was also given for consumption in 1866 ; During the siege of Paris in 1870, the two elephants Castor and Pollux from the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes were slaughtered as a result of the food shortage in the city.