Ernst Pinkert

Ernst Pinkert (around 1906)

Ernst Pinkert in the last years of his life together with his wife

Pinkert's grave in the Leipzig North Cemetery

Ernst Wilhelm Pinkert (born February 5, 1844 in Hirschfelde ; † April 28, 1909 in Leipzig ) was a German innkeeper and founder of the Leipzig Zoo .

Childhood and youth

The son of the cottager born and Tagarbeiters Johann Christoph Pinkert and his wife Rachel Dorothea Lehmann grew up in a small timber frame house that his father bought in 1837 for 200 thalers . He will have acquired his later ambitions for his own restaurant from his godfather Carl Gottlieb Seifert. He ran the Gasthof Zum Hirsch on the market square in Hirschfeld , where, according to tradition, Pinkert learned the trade of an innkeeper.

Zoo director

In 1863 Ernst Pinkert moved to Leipzig to work as an innkeeper. In 1870 he became a citizen of the city and in 1873 leased the Zum Pfaffendorfer Hof restaurant . To revitalize his inn, he began in 1876 with his partner, the Hamburg animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck , with the exhibition of exotic animals. On June 9, 1878, the first day of Pentecost, he opened his Pfaffendorfer Tierpark , the 23rd zoo in Europe , as a private company on an area of ​​just over a hectare .

In 1899 Pinkert turned the zoological garden into a stock corporation , of which he was appointed director and director. In the period after that, the administration building, the zoo entrance with its connection to Pfaffendorfer Straße, the society house with restoration, the concert garden, the monkey house and the new predator house were built. Under Pinkert's direction, the Leipzig zoo developed from a small private foundation into an internationally recognized, popular place for recreation and education, science and research.

Völkerschauen

In cooperation with Hagenbeck, Pinkert also organized so-called Völkerschauen . People from foreign races were exhibited in the zoo. He set up a “people's meadow” between the predator house and the seal pool. Later he had a “Völkerbühne” built next to it with a jungle backdrop. Ernst Pinkert was the initiator of the “Bedouin Caravan” show in 1880, which also appeared in other locations. In order to increase the attraction of the shows, Pinkert developed the concept of “Living Pictures” in 1894, in which the exhibited people had to recreate well-known paintings. A group of Swahili , for example, presented Carl Joseph Begas's “Mohren wash” . It was desirable that the exhibited appear as clumsy as possible in order to achieve a particularly high level of entertainment.

After a year of serious illness, Ernst Pinkert died in Leipzig in 1909. His grave is in the city's north cemetery on Berliner Strasse.

Honors

The Saxon King awarded Pinkert the title of Royal Saxon Commission Council .

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Leipzig Zoo, a memorial to Pinkert was inaugurated on June 16, 1928 in front of the New Predator House. In a brick wall, together with an inscription, there is a bronze relief created by Mathieu Molitor , which shows the zoo founder in profile.

On the occasion of Pinkert's one hundredth anniversary of his death in 2009, a section of Leipzig's Erich-Weinert-Strasse opposite the zoo was renamed Ernst-Pinkert-Strasse. In addition, in 2010 the 25th school in Leipzig's Martinstrasse was named Ernst Pinkert School.

Pinkert's parents' house in Hirschfelde, Zittauer Strasse 14

parents house

Ernst Pinkert's parental home in Hirschfelde has changed hands several times over the past 150 years. The last owner, Milda Ulbricht, donated a plaque attached to the house in 1999 in memory of the founder of the Leipzig Zoo. After her death in 2005, the property was transferred to the Hirschfelde community. After that, the Hirschfeld History Working Group took over the house at Zittauer Straße 14 for the association's activities and renovated it.

On May 29, 2010, the Foundation for the District of Görlitz and Bautzen awarded the Environment House Prize for 2010 to Museum Dittelsdorf e. V. - Working group on the history of Hirschfelde “for the restoration of the half-timbered house according to the monument and true to the original”.

literature

• Mustafa Haikal , Jörg Junhold: A self-made man of the best kind. The zoo founder Ernst Pinkert. In: Georg Westermann, Illustrated Guide through the Leipzig Zoological Garden. Reprint of the Schloemp edition, Leipzig 1883. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-936508-49-9 , pp. 55-76.
• Ludwig Heck: cheerful and serious memories of zoo gardeners. In: The Zoological Garden (NF). Volume 13, 1941, pp. 355-361.
• Gisela Krische: In memory of Ernst Pinkert, the founder of the Leipzig Zoo. In: Panthera. Messages from the Leipzig Zoological Garden 1994. Leipzig Zoological Garden, Leipzig 1994, pp. 2-4.
• Archive Wieland Menzel, Museum Dittelsdorf e. V.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (ed.): Colonialism in this country. A search for clues in Germany. Sutton Verlag, 2007, p. 55.
2. ↑ Ernst Pinkert: Ernst Pinkert's Bedouin Caravan. 1880.
3. ↑ Alexander Honold: exhibitions of the foreign - people and people show around 1900. In: Sebastian Conrad, Jürgen Osterhammel (ed.): Das Kaiserreich transnational. Germany in the world 1871-1914. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, p. 180.
4. ↑ Klaus Nerger: The grave of Ernst Pinkert. In: knerger.de. Retrieved August 28, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Markus Cottin et al .: Leipzig Monuments. Edited by the Leipziger Geschichtsverein e. V., Sax-Verlag, Beucha 1998, ISBN 3-930076-71-3 , p. 57
6. ↑ New and partial renaming of streets. Leipzig Official Journal No. 15 of August 15, 2009
7. ^ City of Leipzig, school administration office: Ernst-Pinkert-Schule - elementary school
8. ^ Foundation for the Environment: Environment and the Environment Award, 2010 Award ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.