Vivarium (Prater)

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The vivarium in Vienna's Prater, destroyed in 1945 (1880)

The Vienna Vivarium was a show aquarium that was built in the Vienna Prater on the occasion of the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 . In 1903 it was converted into an experimental biological research institute under the zoologist Hans Leo Przibram , in which the biologist Paul Kammerer and briefly Alma Mahler-Werfel also worked.

The Biological Research Institute was one of the most remarkable scientific institutions in Austria in the first half of the 20th century. For more than thirty years, innovative scientific work in the field of experimental biology was created there.

Location of the aquarium (1883)

Vivarium

The neo-renaissance building in the Vienna Prater, standing at the beginning of the main avenue and officially called Praterbude No. 1 , was built as a show aquarium for the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 according to plans by the zoologist Alfred Brehm . From 1878 a terrarium for reptiles and other land animals was added and monkeys and crocodiles were also shown.

Wiener Vivarium , advertisement in Kikeriki , August 1888

In 1888 the aquarium was expanded into a zoo and renamed the vivarium . It was part of a small zoological garden that existed in the Prater. The initiator of the project, the zoologist Friedrich Knauer (1850–1926), was in charge of the project; the project was financially supported by Karl Adolf Bachofen von Echt (1830–1922). In front of and behind the building there were a total of 16 seawater basins, filled with the water of the Adriatic . Freshwater aquariums were located inside the building . Grotto olms from the well-known Adelsberg grotto (they later became experimental animals for the new users) were among the attractions of the house. On December 23, 1890, the new buildings and renovations begun in June were completed, and the facility housed over 1,000 living rare animals .

On May 13, 1894, south of the vivarium, the (new) Vienna zoo opened up from Laufenbergergasse , an extensive, structurally redesigned complex that should have focused on the vivarium in the initial planning ( rejected by the chief steward's office). After the zoo opened, animals from the vivarium were moved to the stables in the new facility.

Finally, there was a company merger with the new zoo (also: Tiergarten am Schüttel ), which displayed people and animals in the style of the then fashionable exoticism: Eskimos with their reindeer and polar dogs, Sinhalese with elephants, Ashanti with various African animals. In the vivarium, on the other hand, rare small animals were shown: crawling cats , marsupials and monkeys. A rarity rarely seen in human care was the Cape Verde giant skink ( Macroscincus coctei ). But the large audience gradually stayed away. The Hagenbeck animal show was intended to prevent bankruptcy as a crowd puller: a polar landscape was built in the courtyard of the vivarium and populated with sea lions, penguins and, as a special attraction, a young walrus. Polar bears were displayed in cages. But the commercial operator, the Tiergarten am Schüttel, was unable to hold its own against the competition from the Schönbrunn Zoo, which was accessible free of charge , and had to file for bankruptcy. The building was sold in the spring of 1902 after the zoo company went bankrupt in 1900, as were the existing animals, offered as possible cheap acquisitions .

Biological research institute

The zoologist Hans Leo Przibram bought the vivarium together with the botanist Leopold von Portheim , a wealthy private scholar with whom he became a friend, which the botanist Wilhelm Figdor also joined. The establishment of the biological research institute in the Prater in Vienna, the first institute ever dedicated to this purpose, enabled the scientists to carry out qualitative experimental investigations.

“While nowadays nobody would try to establish laws in physics, chemistry or even in physiology without experimental justification, the general findings in the morphology of animals were mostly based on speculation. It is only recently that the experimental method has gained ground and research is being carried out on a large scale in institutes set up for this purpose. 25 years ago we anticipated this necessity and founded the first station for experimental biology in the 'Vivarium' in Vienna. Over time it was equipped with facilities that made it possible to carry out not only qualitative, but also especially quantitative experiments. Again I would like to point to physics and chemistry as brilliant examples of what can be achieved in the unraveling of the laws of nature through quantitative experiments and mathematical formulations based on them. It is my firm belief that if we want biology to become an exact science, we must do the same. This was my goal in all of my work. "( Hans Leo Przibram on the Biological Research Institute)

In 1903 the building was set up as a research institute for experimental biology and was given the name "Biological Research Institute" (BVA). Przibram and Portheim took over the management, Przibram as head of the zoological department, Portheim together with Figdor as head of the botanical department. The chemical-physical department was headed by Wolfgang Joseph Pauli (1869–1955), the important colloid chemist and father of the physicist of the same name and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli , the physiological department by Eugen Steinach , known for his attempts to influence sex and "rejuvenation". The establishment of a plant physiology department was planned for a later date.

The organizational principle that determines scientific work, namely to work on a complex research area such as biology in the interaction of different sub-disciplines, was visionary. The synthesis of botanical, zoological, chemical and physical research already took place here when there was no talk of interdisciplinary research.

In addition to the necessary work rooms, rooms for employees and laboratories, stables, open-air terrariums and glasshouses, garden and courtyard plots, temperature chambers, six cemented pools and a large frog pool were built. The new temperature chambers represented a pioneering achievement in control engineering.

Paul Kammerer

As an assistant, Przibram had taken on the young Paul Kammerer , who had recommended himself to him especially because of his great skill in raising animals and who later became the most famous biologist of his time. In 1903 Kammerer became Adjunkt Przibrams and was entrusted with the establishment of terrariums and aquariums . He began to breed amphibians with the most modern facilities at the time . Soon he was noticed by his skill in animal breeding and was able to carry out his first independent experiments on the inheritance of acquired traits ( Lamarckism ). Przibram later reported:

“When setting up the biological research institute, we were looking for an employee who would set up the terrariums and aquariums and make the institute comfortable for the small animals. Drawn to him by a newspaper article by Kammerer about his animal care, I went to see him and found an enthusiastic and skilled employee. In him was a facility for musical activity and a large part of artistic nature as well as the ability to observe nature very closely and, in particular, a love for all living creatures that I have never seen in anyone else. Here was the fulcrum of his whole being. In particular, he set up the exemplary care for amphibians and reptiles, which is so important for biological experiments. I have hardly known anyone who would have met all the requirements for it like him. However, this was not necessarily an advantage, because the main value of the experimental method is precisely that the same results can be achieved over and over again under the same test conditions and can be confirmed during re-testing. If the follow-up does not succeed in keeping the animals alive for as long or for as many generations as the first observer, how should a follow-up lead to a confirmation and thus certainty of the findings? ”(Hans Leo Przibram: Paul Kammerer as a biologist. In: Monistic monthly books. November 1926)

Kammerer was said to have fabulous skills in experimental handling, for example with frogs , and his experiments - although well documented - could not be repeated by anyone later, since nobody knew how to deal with frogs as he did. Between 1903 and 1908, Kammerer wrote 130 articles, contributions and research reports in the Biological Research Institute in the Prater.

A European praying mantis

He was temporarily assisted by the famous artist museum Alma Mahler-Werfel , which reported on:

“Now he gave me a mnemonic attempt to work with praying mantises . He wanted to find out whether these animals lose their memory by molting or whether this act is just a superficial skin reaction. For that purpose I should teach them a habit. It failed in that there was nothing really to teach these critters. I had to feed them down in the cage, because a priori they always eat up high and in the light. The cage was blacked out below. They couldn't be made to give up their habit of loving Kammerer. "Mahler had to feed the experimental animals with mealworms," ​​and I was dreading this huge box full of wriggling worms. He saw it, took a handful and put the creatures in his mouth. He ate her smacking loudly. ”(Alma Mahler-Werfel: The shimmering way. Quoted in: Oliver Hilmes : Widow in Wahn. The life of Alma Mahler-Werfel. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2004.)

Alma Mahler later suggested that there could have been irregularities in Kammerer's experiments in the Prater laboratory: "He wished the results of his research so fervently that he could unconsciously deviate from the truth." (Alma Mahler-Werfel: Mein Leben. Fischer Publisher, 1960.)

Thanks to his skill in raising animals, especially amphibians , Kammerer succeeded in raising generations under changed conditions, and he believed that he had received changes that could only be explained by the inheritance of acquired traits. Since this violated a dogma of the prevailing theory of development, Kammerer's results were vehemently disputed, and when it turned out that a specimen copy revealed subsequent manipulation, Kammerer was portrayed as a swindler. Kammerer committed suicide. Przibram always remained convinced of the authenticity of Kammerer's observations and repeatedly stated in private conversations that he believed he knew who had committed the forgery to compromise Kammerer's, but could not make it public due to a lack of sufficient evidence.

Temperature chambers

In order to put the BVA on a more secure basis than that of a private institute, the founders transferred the establishment, including a substantial working capital, to the Imperial Academy of Sciences on January 1, 1914 , which retained the founders as heads of the individual departments. The connection with the academy was maintained by a board of trustees appointed by it, the first chairman of which was the botanist Richard von Wettstein .

Przibram's endeavors were directed towards the quantitative development of biology. The first prerequisite for this was to keep the external factors that can influence life processes constant, and above all the temperature . Przibram constructed the chambers of constant temperature at a time when there was no talk of " air conditioning ". In two rooms, one for higher and one for lower temperatures, four departments were created in which, with the help of automatically regulated heating and cooling systems, the temperature, with the exception of minor fluctuations, at various constant values, graduated from five to five degrees, for several years could be held. This made it possible to run experiments at constant temperatures between +5 and +40 Celsius. Regulation of the humidity was also planned.

During the First World War, part of the institution had to be converted into a hospital for the wounded, and Przibram was called up for infantry training.

In 1932 the old show aquariums were put back into operation, with Przibram introducing new characteristics: each container represented a different habitat in terms of fauna and flora , such as a pond , river , tropical sea, etc. The show was open to the general public and guided tours were organized for schools. The vestibule also housed a unique collection of natural and artificial deformities that Przibram had compiled.

Displacement and Destruction

The memorial plaque on the fence of today's school traffic garden

In 1938, after the Anschluss , Przibram was dismissed from his position for “racial” reasons and was no longer allowed to enter the institution he had founded and managed for decades; he also had to leave his large private library there.

On April 4, 1938, the research institute was placed under the provisional management of Franz Köck, who had held the position of adjunct from 1927 after Paul A. Weiss left, through a "party official measure" . Köck arbitrarily assumed the leadership role, but this was rejected by the Academy of Sciences in 1940. Due to a lack of suitable management, the biological research institute had to cease operations in 1941.

In April 1945, in the final phase of the battle for Vienna , when the Red Army conquered street after street in the east of the city, the building was probably set on fire by the SS with grenades between April 9 and 11, 1945 . The entire scientific and technical equipment, including all animals, including a crocodile and the eighty-year-old turtles, were destroyed. Only a ruin remained.

At that time the academy did not have the means to restore the institution, so it sold the ruins. The proceeds were used in the spirit of the donors to promote zoological and botanical research, specifically to design the Lunz Biological Station on Lake Lunz in Lower Austria .

The building was demolished in 1947. “World-famous research facility will be a dance hall. Glück und Ende der Biologische Versuchsanstalt im Wiener Prater ”was the headline of New Austria in August 1948. And in October it reported resignedly about“ The Bartered Biology ”.

Today, in addition to the memorial plaque from 2015, only Vivariumstrasse in Vienna's 2nd district reminds of the magnificent building that was once located at the beginning of Prater Hauptallee.

7 employees died in concentration camps of the Nazis , including Leonore breaker , Hans Przibram (at hunger edema) and his wife (after by suicide).

The research facility was a particularly early facility that operated experimental biology. The Vivarium was also ahead of its time in terms of gender: in April 1938, 8 out of 34 employees at the BVA were women.

literature

  • Hans Przibram : The biological research institute in Vienna. Purpose, establishment and activity during the first five years of its existence (1902–1907). Report of the zoological, botanical and physico-chemical departments. (Four parts). In: Journal for biological technology and methodology. 1, 1908, ISSN  0258-4247 , pp. 234-264, 329-362, 409-433, supplementary booklet 1909, pp. 1-34 (at the MPIWG: [1] ).
  • Hans Przibram: The biological research institute in Vienna. Formation and activity during the second quinquennium of its existence (1908–1912). Report of the zoological, botanical and physico-chemical departments. In: Zeitschrift für Biologische Technik und Methodik 3, 1913, pp. 163–245 (at the MPIWG: [2] ).
  • Wolfgang L. Reiter: Destroyed and forgotten: The biological research institute and its scientists. In: Austrian Journal of History. 10 issue 4, 1999, pp. 585-614 ( (PDF; 1.68 MB) ).
  • Deborah R. Coen: Living Precisely in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. In: Journal of the History of Biology. 39, 2006, ISSN  0022-5010 , pp. 493-523.
  • Veronika Hofer: Rudolf Goldscheid, Paul Kammerer and the biologists of the Prater Vivarium in the liberal popular education of Viennese modernism. In: Mitchell G. Ash , Christian Stifter (ed.): Science, politics and the public. From Viennese modernism to the present. WUV, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85114-664-6 , pp. 149-184 ( Wiener Vorlesungen 12).
  • Arthur Koestler : The toad kisser . The case of the biologist Paul Kammerer. Fritz Molden, Wien et al. 1972, ISBN 3-217-00452-3 (English original: The Case of the Midwife Toad. Hutchinson, London 1971, ISBN 0-09-108260-9 ).

Web links

Klaus Taschwer: * Displaced, burned, sold and forgotten. derstandard.at, accessed on February 21, 2013

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Johannes Ad (olf) Schmal :  The Vienna Thiergarten. In:  Dillinger's illustrated Reise-Zeitung , No. 14/1894 (5th year), May 10, 1894, p. 2 ff. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / dil.
  2. ↑ Local report. (...) Vienna Vivarium. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, No. 8623/1888, August 26, 1888, p. 6, column 1. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.
  3. ↑ Vivarium, Prater, Haupt-Allee 1. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, No. 9464/1890, December 31, 1890, p. 13, column 1. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.
  4. ↑ a b The Thiergarten in the Imperial and Royal Prater. In:  Deutsches Volksblatt / Deutsches Volksblatt. Radical medium-sized organ / telegraph. Radical Mittelstandsorgan / Deutsches Volksblatt. Daily newspaper for Christian German politics , morning edition, No. 1918/1894 (VI. Year), May 6, 1894, p. 1 f. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / dvb.
  5. ↑ Sale of the vivarium. In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Democratic organ / Neues Wiener Abendblatt. Evening edition of the (") Neue Wiener Tagblatt (") / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Evening edition of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt / Wiener Mittagsausgabe with Sportblatt / 6 o'clock evening paper / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Neue Freie Presse - Neues Wiener Journal / Neues Wiener Tagblatt , morning edition, No. 63/1902 (XXXVI. Year), March 5, 1902, p. 8, top center. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwg.
  6. ↑ Birgit Dalheimer: The Vivarium. Experimental biology in the Vienna Prater. A search for clues. Dimensions, Radio Ö1, orf.at, October 31, 2016. - Listenable for 7 days. - BVA, founded in 1902. Where the traffic school garden is today. - Announcement: Gerhard Müller, Theoretical Biology, TU Wien, anthology about the Vivarium, planned to be published in 2017.

Remarks

  1. ↑ From 1863 to 1866 a zoo owned by the Vienna Thiergarten Society already existed here, but it had to close for economic reasons. - See: fs:  Small Chronicle. (...) The end of the Vienna Thiergarten. In:  Wiener Zeitung , supplement “Wiener Abendpost”, No. 267/1900, November 21, 1900, p. 5, bottom right, f. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 '53.4 "  N , 16 ° 23' 52.5"  E