Otto Antonius

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Hellmut Otto Antonius (born May 21, 1885 in Vienna , † April 9, 1945 in Vienna) was the director of the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, a zoologist , paleontologist and co-founder of modern zoo biology .

Life and career

Otto Antonius was born as the oldest of five children of an evangelical pastor from Transylvania. It was named after the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck .

He graduated from a humanistic grammar school in Vienna and then began his studies in natural sciences , especially zoology and paleontology , at the philosophy faculty of the University of Vienna . During his student days, Antonius joined the “ Silesia ” fraternity in 1906 , an emphatically German-national student organization to which his father and three brothers also belonged.

In 1910 he was promoted to Dr. phil. did his doctorate and after graduating as a research assistant at the chair for palaeobiology with Professor Othenio Abel . Until 1918 Antonius served as first lieutenant and liaison officer in the First World War . He was stationed in the Carpathian Mountains in the winter of 1914/15 , in Eastern Galicia in May / June 1915, in the Krn Massif in midsummer and autumn 1915 , in the Flitscher Basin in the winter of 1915/16 and again in Eastern Galicia until November 1916. As a liaison officer in a Turkish army command, he finally got to Palestine . For the war effort, which he survived without being wounded, he was awarded the Iron Cross , the Iron Crescent and the Silver Medal of Bravery .

From 1919 he resumed his assistantship and habilitated in 1919 at the University of Othenio Abel , and in 1921 at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences under Leopold Adametz .

Grave site at the Vienna Central Cemetery

In 1922 he married Margarethe von Tunner . There are two daughters from this marriage. Antonius, who had expressed suicidal thoughts since the bombing of February 19 and 21, 1945, passed away voluntarily on April 9, 1945 together with his wife.

Antonius was buried in an honorary grave at the Protestant cemetery at Vienna's central cemetery.

Zoo director in Schönbrunn

From December 1, 1923, the paleontologist and specialist in zoological research on domestic animals began his work at Schönbrunn Zoo , from April 1, 1924, he worked as scientific director and from December 1, 1925 as sole director.

In March 1934 he was officially dismissed from service on charges of being an active member of the NSDAP, which was then banned in Austria . Antonius denied membership and successfully litigated his impeachment. On January 4, 1937, he took office again.

Antonius made a contribution to the continued existence of the Schönbrunn Zoo, which before the First World War was one of the most beautiful and largest in the world, but whose animal population had declined by almost 85% due to supply shortages during the war. In autumn 1921 the zoo was about to be closed. As early as 1918, when renovation work and modernization of the technically obsolete animal houses had to be carried out, Antonius wrote an exposé on the reconstruction.

Thanks to donations from the Viennese population, private sponsors, the "relief campaign for the expansion of the Schönbrunn Zoo" and the animal transports by banker Alfred Weidholz , Antonius succeeded in replenishing the animal population, renovating existing animal houses and building new projects such as the monkey house or the bird of prey aviary, which was considered a model building throughout Europe.

Antonius also introduced new media such as the diorama show in 1934. The dioramas were painted by the academic painter Franz Roubal and showed landscapes and animals from the prehistoric times of Austria. However, they were unsuccessful and were destroyed by bombs in World War II. Today only photographs of it are preserved.

From 1938 to 1945 Antonius was Vice President of the International Union of Directors of Zoological Gardens . He was also a member of the Zoological Society of London .

In addition to his work as a zoo manager, Antonius also worked as a university teacher. In 1931 he was awarded the title of Associate University Professor.

Zoo biology

Otto Antonius, together with Heini Hediger and Karl Max Schneider, is one of the founders of modern zoo biology, for which he developed essential principles that are still valid today.

He was one of the scientific authors who published most frequently in the journal Der Zoologischer Garten . He was also co-editor of the magazine for animal psychology .

Antonius advocated an expanded objective for the zoo. In 1926, under his direction, the “Menagerie Schönbrunn” was officially renamed “Tiergarten Schönbrunn”. Zoological gardens should also be places of experimental animal and breeding research and serve to clarify questions of inheritance and descent of domestic animals from wild animals, as well as animal psychological observations.

Antonius also understood wild animal husbandry as an animal psychological experiment in which one could study the species-specific behavior of wild animals. Through comparative studies he made his first contributions to ethology and was considered an excellent hippologist and horse expert.

He also made scientific experiments on feeding and acclimatization .

As a zoologist, he also dealt with the disciplines of genetics and animal breeding . So he turned his interest to crossbreeding studies to clarify phylogenetic questions as well as backbreeding attempts to clarify the ancestry of domestic animals. In his book Basics of the Tribal History of Domestic Animals , published in 1922 , he dealt with domestication research as a new area of ​​animal breeding. In it he described zoological and historical methods of pet research. Some successful back-breeds were exhibited in the Munich and Berlin zoo, as they were mistakenly believed to be primeval forms. However, no other zoo directors took part in the complex crossbreeding and backbreeding experiments.

Nature conservation as species protection

Antonius recognized the necessity and importance of species protection very early and tried to explain to his contemporaries the global threat to domestic and exotic wild animals.

Under his leadership, the Schönbrunn Zoo took part in the first European species protection program for the conservation of the bison . Through controlled breeding in particularly suitable and guarded areas, good results could be achieved, so that such programs have since been adopted for a wide variety of animal species threatened with extinction.

He also did educational work with his book Captive Animals to show that animals in the zoo do not live in worse conditions than animals in the wild, as both develop the same relationships with their environment. He often quoted Alfred Brehm as saying that a good cage could be an apartment, a bad one like a dungeon for the animal. The modern concept of room quality is already evident here, which is why he planned the enclosures for the animals in a functional and species-appropriate manner.

Works

  • Broad of a Tribal History of Domestic Animals . Jena, 1922.
  • Captured animals . Salzburg, 1933.
  • Equus Abeli ​​nov. spec. Vienna-Leipzig, 1913.
  • The tiger horses . Frankfurt / M., 1951.
  • About the Schönbrunn horse portraits JG v. Hamilton and the Halthurn Stud . Berlin 1937
  • over 100 articles in various journals

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Elsheimer (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1927/28. Frankfurt am Main 1928, p. 8.
  2. ↑ a b c Antonius, Otto: Ornithological memories from four years of war. In: The Zoological Garden (NF). Volume 2, 1930, pp. 32-40.
  3. ^ Brachetka, Julius: News from zoological gardens. Vienna Schönbrunn. In: The Zoological Garden (NF). Volume 20, 1954, No. 4/5, pp. 324-330.
personal data
SURNAME Antonius, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Antonius, Hellmut Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian zoologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1945
Place of death Vienna