An Incredible True Story from the Cold War
September 2, 2019
Cold War Berlin bursts to life in this riveting, lively German bestseller chronicling the fierce rivalry between zoos on either side of the Iron Curtain by journalist Mohnhaupt. The feud raged between “avid animal collector” and veterinarian Heinz-Georg Klos, director of the West Berlin zoo, and his older counterpart in East Berlin’s Tierpark, the “passionate zoologist” Heinrich Dathe, who had dreamed of running a zoo since he was a child. The socialist government “did not want East Berliners traveling to the British sector to visit the zoo there... throwing their money at capitalism,” so it founded its own. Soon, the two zoos and their directors, “each an emblem of his city’s politics,” were engaged in intense competition. “For both men,” Mohnhaupt writes, “being a zoo director was more than a nine-to-five job; it was a calling.” Along with the human characters, a memorable array of four-legged figures includes Knautschke the hippo, so beloved that Berliners fed him cabbage when they had little to spare, and Chi Chi the panda, whose likeness became the logo for the World Wildlife Fund. Mohnhaupt is a keen guide to the difficulties of a divided Berlin and to the enchantment of a career devoted to wild animals.