Gunther Gebel-Williams

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Statue of Gunther Gebel-Williams in Venice

Gunther Gebel-Williams (born September 12, 1934 in Schweidnitz , Lower Silesia Province , † July 19, 2001 in Venice , Florida ) was a German-American trainer . He is considered one of the greatest animal trainers in circus history.

biography

In Germany

Günther Gebel was born in Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia ; he had a sister named Rita six years his senior. His father Max was a set designer , his mother Elfriede a costume tailor; the family lived in poor conditions. His father was an authoritarian alcoholic who beat his wife and children, while his son Günther was beaten by his mother in later years. Günther Gebel only attended school for a total of four years. When the Second World War broke out , Max Gebel was drafted. Elfriede Gebel fled from approaching Russian troops with the children to Zwickau , but eventually returned to Schweidnitz. There Elfriede Gebel was raped by five Russian soldiers. After all, Gebel worked on a farm for the Russian military and was responsible for looking after animals for the first time in his life.

After the end of the war, Max Gebel moved to Wanne-Eickel because he had found a job in his profession there, while Elfriede Gebel moved to Cologne, where her son followed her after living with his father for a week. Günther Gebels later love for animals is explained by the fact that he lacked love and security during his childhood in poverty and war with violent parents and a later absent father, but the love for the circus, as the clown Peggy Williams later found moved by the need to be and remain a child. 1947 Elfriede and Gunther Gebel attended a matinee of Circus Williams in Cologne Williamsbau ; the 13 year old son was delighted. At that time, the circus was looking for a costume tailor: Elfriede Gebel got the job and Günther Gebel got a five-year contract as an apprentice, he began as an usher. The mother left the circus after a few weeks, her son stayed for 20 years. In later years, he reported that his mother signed the contract without his knowledge, presumably to get rid of him. He was accepted into the Williams family, which essentially consisted of parents Carola and Harry Williams , children Jeanette and Alfons, and Holdy Barley, Carola Williams' son from his first marriage.

Gebel was initially trained in horse training by Harry Williams, and he developed an interest in big cats . In 1950 he traveled to London with Harry Williams; During rehearsals for a Roman chariot race in London's Harringay Arena , he suffered serious injuries and died three weeks later. Günther himself then performed such chariot races, but overturned a chariot and had to be hospitalized for several weeks, after which these races were removed from the program and the circus paused for a year. Carola Williams sent Günther Gebel to her brother Franz Althoff , where he learned to work with elephants . In the following season he returned to Circus Williams and at the age of 18 took over functions in the management of the circus, he also acquired further knowledge in elephant training with Carola Williams' brother Adolf Althoff . When he left the Circus Williams in 1956, Gebel appeared with his flock of elephants as well as a horse acrobat and increasingly also with big cats.

In 1960, the son of Carola Williams, Alfons, had a fatal accident in a car, the following year Günther Gebel married his sister Jeanette and took the name Williams . In the winter of 1960/61 and 1965/66 the couple performed together in the Cirque d'hiver with horses, elephants and tigers. It was there that Gebel-Williams met the French tiger trainer Gilbert Houcke , whose light and humorous appearance had a major influence on Gebel's own future style.

In the USA

In 1968 Günther Gebel-Williams signed a four-year contract with the US promoter Irvin Feld, who had bought the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus together with business partners . Out of loyalty to Circus Williams, Gebel-Williams Feld got not only to sign himself, but the entire circus for two million dollars. On November 2nd of that year he traveled by ship to the USA with 17 elephants, nine tigers, 38 horses and other animals. He was accompanied by a troupe of 30 artists, including Jeanette Williams, from whom he was now divorced, as well as his second wife Sigrid and his stepdaughter Tina.

On Feld's advice, Gebel-Williams shaved off his goatee, dyed his hair blonde and from then on wore elaborate glitter costumes. "Gunther's talent and charisma, and his sheer joy of performing, did the rest." ("Gunther's talent and charisma as well as his pure joy of performing took care of the rest.") The time referred to the slim but well-trained 1.70 tall man 1972 as "crazy hydrogen-blonde Tarzan", other nicknames were Golden Gladiator , Lord of the Rings or Caesar of the Circus . The duo Siegfried and Roy , also from Germany, was considered a rival in the audience's favor.

“Gunther” Gebel-Williams became the main attraction of the Ringling Bros' Greatest Show on Earth and quickly became popular in the USA thanks to his charisma and spectacular mixed animal acts. Lions rode horses and elephants or leopards jumped through burning hoops held by tigers. Even a tiger let itself be dragged through the arena by its tail without resistance. In 1982 he presented a trained giraffe in the ring, and zebras and llamas were among his numbers. He only surrendered to the training of domestic cats : “They do what they want.” His numbers were also associated with acrobatic stunts by Gebel-Williams himself, who was catapulted from an elephant onto the back of another elephant.

In 1973 he was named Artist of the Year by the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) , and the following year he was granted US citizenship. In 1977, after three years of preparation, he presented a new big cat number with 15 leopards, two pumas and two black panthers, one of the largest big cat numbers that ever existed.

As early as 1969, Gebel-Williams had his first television appearance on NBC in the USA, which was followed by numerous others in the years to come, including his own show ( Lord of the Ring ). He became known nationwide in 1978 through a commercial for American Express in which he draped his leopard Kenny (named after Irvin Feld's son) over his shoulders and asked with a strong German accent "Do you know me?" In 1981 his son Marc Oliver's film My Father, The Circus King was broadcast.

Gebel-Williams himself described his way of working: “Respect is the foundation of my training style. I worked with tigers as a trainer, never a tamer. I taught them to listen, but still be tigers. I never tried to break their spirits and so I did not use brutality. To train my animals I used words, always words. I'd say 'come here' to any one of the elephants and it would walk right over to me. "(" Respect is the basis of my training style. I worked with tigers as a trainer, not as a tamer. I taught them to listen but to stay tigers. I never tried to break their will and I never used force. To train my animals I used words. I said to one of the elephants 'come here' and they came straight to me. Kenneth Feld, the son of Irvin Feld, on Gebel-Williams: "He inspired a whole generation of Americans through his unique and special relationship with animals."

Memorial plaque in Venice

Gunter Gebel-Williams was a workaholic who didn't spare himself; some days it performed three or four times. In the 1980s he got health problems, from 1989 to 1990 he made his farewell tour. He then became Vice President of Ringling and was responsible for looking after the animals. On November 18, 1990 in Grand Rapids , Michigan , he had the last of his 11,697 appearances, not counting his appearances at Circus Williams. It is said that he did not miss a single appearance, not even if he was previously injured by one of his animals: his body had 500 traces of claws, and his teeth were knocked out more than once. His lips were so scarred that he could barely speak at times. After their death, he had the fur of his favorite cats removed and the fur laid out in his house, but nobody was allowed to enter them.

In 1994 he returned to the ring for a few appearances, and on September 27, 1998 he stood in for his son Mark Oliver so that he could attend the birth of his son. In 1999 he was inducted into the International Circus Hall of Fame . In 2001 he published his autobiography Untamed .

In 1996 Gunter Gebel-Williams had to undergo heart surgery. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2000 after his son, Mark Oliver, noticed that his father was not keeping enough distance from the tigers due to an apparent poor vision. He died on July 19, 2001 at his Venice home.

On December 5, 2005, a statue of Gunther Gebel-Williams was unveiled in his hometown of Venice near the historic railroad depot, where the headquarters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus , which had been in existence since 2017, was also located.

criticism

One reason Ringling Bros. had to close after 146 years was PETA's ongoing protests against the animal numbers on the program and the resulting dwindling viewership. Gunther Gebel-Williams was particularly criticized by the animal rights activists who called the circus program The Cruelest Show on Earth ( The cruelest show on earth ). In 1999 he said: “Once there was a time the circus came to town and the children followed it dancing, but these days the children are more likely to be given coloring books by the animal rights people that feature a circus elephant weeping, and the trainer might be singled out for abuse. "(" There was a time when the circus came to town and the children followed it dancing. Nowadays, children are more likely to get coloring books from the animal rights activists, in which a crying elephant is depicted, and the trainer is accused of abuse. ")

At his funeral in Venice, members of PETA demonstrated in devil costumes. On the first day of his death, an activist dressed as a devil danced on his grave; she was arrested together with other activists because they had returned to the cemetery several times despite being sent off. On the occasion of the unveiling of Gebel-Williams' memorial in 2005, protests broke out again because he had been a man who had terrorized animals with whips and iron hooks all his life. That same year, PETA wanted to place the statue of a crying elephant entitled Elly Wanna Befree next to Gebel-Williams'.

Mark Oliver Gebel, who had followed in his father's footsteps, retired as a trainer in 2004 because he did not feel up to the constant attacks and legal actions by PETA activists.

Autobiography

  • With Toni Reinhold: Untamed: the autobiography of the circus's greatest animal trainer . W. Morrow, New York 2001, ISBN 0-688-08645-4 .

literature

  • Joanne Carol Joys: The Wild Things . Phil. Diss., Bowling Green State University 2011, pp. 442-450 ( online ).
  • Reinold Louis / Wolfgang Oelsner: The Williams building 1947–1956. Memories of a center of Cologne entertainment culture . Ed .: Große Kölner KG (=  Große Kölner Edition . Volume 5 ). Marzellen, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-937795-53-9 .
  • Susan Rosenkranz / Gunther Gebel-Williams: Lord of the rings. Gunther Gebel-Williams . Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, Washington 1988.

Web links

Commons : Gunther Gebel-Williams  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Dominique Jando: Gunther Gebel-Williams. In: Circopedia. Retrieved May 8, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Untamed , p. 71. f.
  3. ↑ a b c d Joys, The Wild Things , p. 447.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f D. Nevil: Gunther Gebel-Williams. In: Independent. July 29, 2001, Retrieved May 8, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Untamed , p. 83.
  6. ↑ Untamed , p. 84.
  7. ↑ Untamed , p. 87.
  8. ^ A b Jimmy Lavery: The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy. Phoenix Books, Inc., 2008, ISBN 978-1-59777-560-1 , p. 66 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  9. ^ Circus Williams story. In: circus-williams.de. December 1, 1903, accessed January 27, 2018 .
  10. ^ Dominique Jando: Circus Williams. In: Circopedia. February 20, 1995, accessed January 27, 2018 .
  11. ↑ a b c Joys, The Wild Things , p. 443.
  12. ↑ a b Joys, The Wild Things , p. 445.
  13. ^ Roxanne Roberts: Gebel-William's Wild World. April 13, 1990, Retrieved May 9, 2018 .
  14. ↑ a b c d Richard Severo: Gunther Gebel-Williams, Circus Animal Trainer, Dies at 66. In: nytimes.com. July 20, 2001, accessed May 8, 2018 .
  15. ^ Joys, The Wild Things , p. 444.
  16. ↑ a b Mariam Lau: One does kiss leopards. In: welt.de . July 20, 2001. Retrieved May 9, 2018 .
  17. ^ The Lion Cage Is Empty: Gunther Gebel-Williams Passes Away. In: ABC News. February 23, 2006, accessed May 8, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Gunther Gebel Williams 1978 American Express Commercial on YouTube , November 17, 2016
  19. ↑ Dee Vegas: Obituary: Gunther Gebel-Williams. In: theguardian.com. August 2, 2001, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  20. ^ Circus Hall of Fame Inductees. In: International Circus Hall of Fame. Retrieved May 9, 2018 .
  21. ^ Joyce Wadler: Father's Footsteps Lead Right to Tiger Cage. In: nytimes.com. April 2, 2001, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  22. ↑ Gunther Gebel-Williams - Venice, FL. In: waymarking.com. August 1, 2012, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  23. ^ People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Chronik Circus Ringling Bros. (in detail). In: peta.de. June 20, 2011, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  24. ↑ Asawin Suebsaeng: The Cruelest Show on Earth. In: motherjones.com. October 31, 2011, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  25. ^ Animal Rights Foundation of Florida Protests at Gunther Gebel-Williams Funeral. In: brian.carnell.com. July 24, 2001, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  26. ^ Bill Hutchinson: Devil picks a hot day for grave dancing. In: heraldtribune.com. July 20, 2002, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  27. ^ A b Paul Quinlan: PETA wants its own circus statue. In: heraldtribune.com. November 23, 2005, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  28. ^ David AH Wilson: The Welfare of Performing Animals. Springer, 2015, ISBN 978-3-662-45834-1 , p. 113 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  29. ^ Joys, The Wild Things , p. 448.
personal data
SURNAME Gebel-Williams, Gunther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gebel, Günther (original name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American trainer
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweidnitz , Lower Silesia Province
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 2001
Place of death Venice , Florida