menagerie
The menagerie is a historical form of animal husbandry and as such is the forerunner of the zoological garden , which only developed in the course of the 19th century . The term menagerie comes from French and, borrowed from peasant vocabulary, has been used as a term for courtly animal husbandry since the 17th century . The Encyclopédie méthodique of 1782 defines menagerie as "établissement de luxe et de curiosité". It was only later that the term was also transferred to traveling exhibitions ( traveling menagerie ) that traveled through the country and took part in annual fairs .
Courtly menageries
A court menagerie was attached directly to the court of an aristocrat or a ruler . So it was mostly in the garden of a larger property or, like pheasantries and orangeries , in a castle park .
The courtly menageries differ from zoological gardens in that they were carried by aristocrats and not primarily scientifically oriented. They served to demonstrate power or wealth and gave aristocratic society the opportunity to diversify. Only in isolated cases did they become places of scientific study. Zoological gardens, on the other hand, were in most cases founded by the bourgeoisie and were supported by those responsible who represented a scientific and educational claim.
Courtly menageries existed as early as the Middle Ages . Probably the most important was the royal menagerie in the Tower of London , which was built in 1235 under Henry III. of England (1207–1272) began, among other things with an elephant . In the 16th century, the Italian aristocracy also began to keep exotic animals in the gardens of their residences on the outskirts of cities. This included the villa of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577–1633) near Rome . The game reserve of King Manuel I of Portugal in the Castle of Ribeira in Lisbon was admired in Europe at the beginning of the 16th century because of the colossal pachyderms that Manuel used to import from India and of which the elephant Hanno and Dürer's rhinoceros as gifts to Pope Leo X. became famous.
The menageries really flourished after Louis XIV (1638–1715) had a complex of enclosures for exotic animals built in the palace gardens of Versailles in 1663/64. From 1664 exotic animals were kept in this menagerie. The elephant of Louis XIV lived here from 1668 to 1681. The enclosure complex in Versailles was arranged in a fan shape around a square with a pavilion with a domed roof in the middle. The baroque complex , designed around a symmetrical roundabout with a central building, became the model for many other courtly menageries, including the menagerie that was built in 1752 in the Schönbrunn palace gardens . The Schönbrunn menagerie is the only one that still exists today, but it has developed into a scientifically oriented, modern zoo. Due to the local continuity, today's Schönbrunn Zoo is often referred to as the oldest zoo in the world.
Courtly menageries not only followed the French model in their architecture , but menageries in the English garden style were also built later , such as the menagerie of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. (1770–1840) on Pfaueninsel in Berlin-Wannsee . However, the passion of many princes for keeping exotic animals declined over time. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, too, the court menageries were gradually displaced and the bourgeois zoological gardens took their place.
Wandering menageries
→ Main article: Wandermenagerie
Since around the middle of the 18th century, so-called traveling menageries with their animal stalls have been moving from place to place in Central Europe, satisfying the population's thirst for sensation by showing them exotic animals. The wandering menageries are to be distinguished from the courtly menageries. Their operators, the menagerists, belonged to the traveling people and thus to the social outsiders. Only later did some of them gain prestige and wealth through their animal shows. In some cases, they even carried large animals such as elephants or giraffes with them and thus attracted the attention of the population who did not know such animals. One of the most important traveling menageries in Europe in the first half of the 19th century was that of the Dutch van Aken brothers . The performances of the Berlin animal showman Garnier became famous throughout Europe when two elephants from his menagerie were killed by cannonballs in 1819 and 1820 . The elephant Baba, for example, was so popular between 1824 and 1840 that the wandering menageries sometimes presented their pachyderms under the same name. In the USA , the Van Amburgh menagerie became very famous, especially as it was one of the few to survive the American Civil War (1861–1865). At the end of the 19th century, PT Barnum made the elephant Jumbo world famous with a tour of the United States.
Menageries today
The court menageries in particular are a historical phenomenon and as such are no longer in function today. This historical form of animal husbandry has meanwhile been completely replaced by modern zoos - both in terms of their programmatic orientation and in their architectural appearance. In Versailles, for example, only the architectural remains and the architectural floor plan can be viewed in the park of the Versailles Palace . Individual aviaries still exist on the Pfaueninsel in Berlin , but the royal Prussian menagerie no longer exists in its entirety. In the Schönbrunn Zoo alone, exotic animals are still kept in the historic menagerie buildings (adapted to modern zoo animal husbandry). According to its name, its self-image and the definition of a zoo, it is now a scientifically oriented zoological garden and no longer a court menagerie. Nevertheless, the baroque ensemble can still give a good impression of the architecture of court menageries based on the model of Versailles.
A single institution still bears the name "Menagerie" today. This is the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which, however, can be assigned to the modern, bourgeois zoological gardens from its creation. So it came into being in 1793 when the bourgeoisie was founded and offered well-known natural scientists the opportunity to research exotic animals.
literature
in alphabetical order by authors / editors
- Eric Baratay, Elisabeth Hardouin – Fougier: Zoo. From the menagerie to the zoo . Verlag Klaus Wagenbach , Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-8031-3604-0 (Translated from the French; original title: Zoos ).
- Daniel Hahn: The Tower Menagerie. Being the amazing true story of the Royal collection of wild and ferocious beasts . Simon & Schuster, London 2003. ISBN 0-7432-2081-1
- Mitchell G. Ash , Lothar Dittrich (ed.): Menagerie des Kaisers - Zoo der Wiener. 250 years of Schönbrunn Zoo . Pichler, Vienna 2002. ISBN 3-85431-269-5
- Bettina Paust: Studies on the baroque menagerie in German-speaking countries = manuscripts for art history in the Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft 43. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft , Worms 1996. ISBN 978-3-88462-942-0
- Annelore Rieke – Müller, Lothar Dittrich : The lion roars next door. The establishment of zoological gardens in the German-speaking area 1833–1869 . Böhlau Verlag , Cologne 1998.
