Miss Baba (elephant)
Miss Baba († 1857) was an Indian elephant cow who was driven through central Germany by a traveling menagerie owned by a Kreutzberg family and put on display in the middle of the 19th century . The elephant was able to perform a few pieces of dressage , but suffered a spectacular and painful end, which caused a sensation in rural Thuringia in the 19th century and which is remembered in Niederroßla every 25 years with an anniversary celebration, the elephant festival.
The animal was the attraction of the menagerie and, due to its weight, was transported in a completely closed wagon without a floor, which was built around the elephant and in which it covered the distance on foot without being seen by onlookers. Otherwise it would not have been possible to make money viewing the animal.
At the places of the exhibition he was quartered with farmers, mostly in horse stables or barns . The elephant received food from local feed bought on site .
Events from 13th to 15th February 1857
On February 13, 1857, the menagerie came to Niederroßla an der Ilm, where there were guest performances and demonstrations. During this time, the elephant was housed in the stable of a widow Burckhardt, in which a large number of beets was also stored behind a partition . On the night of February 15, the elephant pushed in the partition unnoticed and ate the beets, which were freezing cold or frozen at this time of year.
There was initially a dispute over compensation , which was decided in favor of the widow Burckhardt. Miss Baba's owners had to pay for the beets and partition, were upset, and prepared for early departure. The elephant was built into the car and the menagerie left the place in the direction of Buttstädt , the next planned stop on the journey. There are essentially two variants of the following events, those of the Kreutzberg family and those of the villagers of Niederroßla, which could not be legally clarified later.
The elephant that ate the cold, sugary turnips developed colic and his health deteriorated so that the journey could not proceed quickly. The elephant collapsed in the wagon not far from Niederroßla, whereupon the wagon was dismantled to his relief (Kreutzberg variant) or smashed by the elephant himself (villager variant). Numerous onlookers turned up, including drunk members of the local choir who came from a rehearsal and who are said to have annoyed and tormented the elephant . It was carnival time . The Kreutzberg variant reports a cheering crowd, the villagers later described the hustle and bustle as not particularly unusual.
After members of the community council appeared, another dispute arose, because if the animal were to remain on Niederroßlaer Flur, the legal situation stipulated that the community had to look after and care for it at community costs. Should it perish, the weighty cadaver would have to be disposed of at community expenses . The quarrel heated up the crowd, and there were tumults, during which the choir tried to drive the sick animal across the border with sticks and poles. The elephant perished in a previously controversial manner on the steeper road to Wersdorf , but a few meters from the border.
The third dispute was a legal action for damages by the Kreutzberg family against the Niederroßla choir before the Weimar regional court, whereby the Kreutzberg family claimed that the expensive elephant only had colic due to its excessive beet-eating, but that it was not terminally ill and would not have died if it had been hadn't been so terribly beaten and frightened by the drunken onlookers. The Niederroßla choir argued, however, that they did not hit the elephant with the poles and sticks, but only tickled them . There were as many different accounts of the true events of that day as there were eyewitnesses. The district court rejected the Kreutzberg family's claim for damages two years later. This ruling caused general amusement in the district, at times Niederroßla was popularly referred to as Kitzelbach , where elephants are tickled to death .
An elephant festival dedicated to this event has been held in Niederroßla every 25 years since 1907 . An elephant is depicted in the town's coat of arms today. A memorial stone was erected for the 75th jubilee in 1932, for the 100th anniversary in 1957 an elephant memorial was erected on the village green and the stuffed elephant skin was pulled through the village by horses. The place where the elephant died is now called the Elephant Valley. Miss Baba is an honorary citizen in Niederroßla.
Miss Baba's carcass
After much back and forth, the carcass was finally given to Jena by the community because the transport to Berlin was too time-consuming. In Jena, the animal was covered and prepared, but they were only interested in the skeleton, which had long been at the Institute for Special Zoology and Evolutionary Biology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and was shown in the Phyletic Museum in the special exhibition MARINA and other elephants .
The skin was left to the Gotha Natural History Museum and prepared there. The skin preparation - the oldest preserved skin preparation from an elephant - was exhibited in the forecourt of the Natural History Cabinet until 1879 , after which it was kept in the Ducal Museum in Gotha Castle Park. In 1945 the preparation came to Ohrdruf. The following story was passed on for a long time: When Thuringia was briefly occupied by the Americans in 1945, the stuffed skin was supposed to go to America as booty. To do this, she was taken to the collection point in Ohrdruf . Since the preparation did not fit in a railroad car, his legs were cut off without further ado, but due to unexplained circumstances, they were left there; only the replicated tusks were classified as usable and brought to America. Nobody knows where they are today. Research in the 1990s only partially confirmed the accounts and that at least the 'ivory robbery' is not based on truth. In 1950, the prepared skin was brought back to Gotha by Ohrdruf, the legs were sewn on again and stored in the fund until the next elephant festival in 1957, where it then remained in Niederroßla until it came back to Gotha in 1979 for a special exhibition, where it stood up located today. In 1982 the skin came to Niederroßla for a short time for the 125th anniversary. In 2007, the animal's skin and bones were shown together in an exhibition.
Both parts were then brought to the Museum der Natur Gotha, where they were exhibited together in 2008. To what extent this animal can be identified with other trained animals of its kind in the 19th century, who also bore the name Baba , is unknown.
literature
- Wolfgang Zimmermann: Miss Baba - Adventure of an Indian elephant cow. Gotha: Museums of the City of Gotha - Museum of Nature. 1982.
- New edition 2007: Miss Baba - Adventure of an Elephant Cow. Odd and amusing - before and after her death. Published by the Niederroßla Castle and Homeland Association 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang Zimmermann: Failed kidnapping and homecoming , in: Miss Baba (2007), p. 23.