TY - JOUR

T1 - "Künstliche Tiere etc."

T2 - Zoologische Schaulust um 1900

AU - Wessely, Christina

PY - 2008/6

Y1 - 2008/6

N2 - During the 19th and early 20th century zoological gardens ranged among the most prominent places of popular natural history. While aristocratic owners of earlier menageries installed animal collections mostly to symbolize their power over nature as well as to display their extensive diplomatic relations, the zoological gardens founded from the 1830s onwards all over Europe by members of the local bourgeois elites were supposed to mediate their social and political values by "enjoyably educating" a broader public. The new zoos were introduced as places at the antipodes of the frenzy, noise and motion of modern urban life, as spaces of pure, authentic nature whose observation would teach people a reasonable and responsible way of life in a civilised bourgeois community. Taking the Berlin Zoo as an example this paper questions these programmatic imaginations by showing how popular Naturkunde (natural history) was informed by cultures of urban entertainment and spectacle. It discusses the numerous relations and productive tensions that evolved out of the establishment of a "realm of nature" in the middle of the ever growing modern metropolis and investigates the consequences the zoo's rise as "the city's most important attraction" around the turn of the century had for the public perception of natural history as well as for the institution's scientific program.

AB - During the 19th and early 20th century zoological gardens ranged among the most prominent places of popular natural history. While aristocratic owners of earlier menageries installed animal collections mostly to symbolize their power over nature as well as to display their extensive diplomatic relations, the zoological gardens founded from the 1830s onwards all over Europe by members of the local bourgeois elites were supposed to mediate their social and political values by "enjoyably educating" a broader public. The new zoos were introduced as places at the antipodes of the frenzy, noise and motion of modern urban life, as spaces of pure, authentic nature whose observation would teach people a reasonable and responsible way of life in a civilised bourgeois community. Taking the Berlin Zoo as an example this paper questions these programmatic imaginations by showing how popular Naturkunde (natural history) was informed by cultures of urban entertainment and spectacle. It discusses the numerous relations and productive tensions that evolved out of the establishment of a "realm of nature" in the middle of the ever growing modern metropolis and investigates the consequences the zoo's rise as "the city's most important attraction" around the turn of the century had for the public perception of natural history as well as for the institution's scientific program.

KW - Kulturwissenschaften allg.

KW - Cultural nature

KW - Natural history

KW - Popularisation

KW - Recreation

KW - Zoological garden

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=44649111803&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s00048-008-0284-3

DO - 10.1007/s00048-008-0284-3

M3 - Zeitschriftenaufsätze

VL - 16

SP - 153

EP - 182

JO - NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin

JF - NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin

SN - 0036-6978

IS - 2

ER -