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Exhibited: The Hamburg businessman Carl Hagenbeck demonstrated animals as well as people in his zoo (undated photo)
Photo: ullstein bild - United Archives / ullstein bild - United Archives / M-Verlag Berlin
The Hamburg cultural authority urges the Hagenbeck Zoo to deal intensively with its colonial past.
"We have expressly encouraged the Hagenbeck Zoo and will do so again," said spokesman Enno Isermann on Thursday the SPIEGEL.
The background to the warning words is a report by the NDR magazine Panorama.
In it, the French ex-soccer player Christian Karembeu demanded that the zoo should speak openly about the Völkerschauen.
Karembeu's great-grandfather Willy, born in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, was exhibited as a "cannibal" in demonstrations at the zoo.
Initially lured to Paris under a pretext in 1931, Willy Karembeu and 30 other children, women and men were passed on to Hamburg by the Kanak people.
There, in front of an audience, they had to obey the prevailing prejudices of the time: swinging clubs, baring their teeth, uttering wild roars.
Under the title »Kanaken der Südsee«, Hagenbeck's colonial people exhibition was also a guest at the Munich Oktoberfest.
"Actively coming to terms with the colonial past"
In the course of the report, the NDR also wanted to arrange a meeting between the great-grandson and those responsible for the zoo.
According to the broadcaster, the management only agreed to a meeting after long hesitation and without being accompanied by cameras.
At that time Karembeu was already involved in his work as sports director for the Greek champions Olympiacos Piraeus, so that a meeting did not take place.
Spokesman for the cultural authorities, Isermann, did not want to comment on the Karembeu case in detail.
"It is imperative that we as a society also become aware of our colonial past, that we face it and that we actively work through it with the descendants of the victims," he said.
Upon request, the zoo informed SPIEGEL that it had been "dealing extensively with its historical past for a long time", supported by various Hamburg museums and the museum department of the education authority. "As this ongoing process has not yet been completed, we ask for your understanding that we do not want to make a final statement on this topic at the moment," said the press office's statement. In addition, the archives have already been opened to researchers such as the ethnologist Hilke Tode-Arora. However, there is still no memory of the racist "Völkerschauen" on the zoo grounds.
In 1874, the Hamburg animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck began exhibiting not only elephants but also people from distant countries - a real human zoo spectacle.
First he showed a family from Lapland with their reindeer, later he showed Nubians, Inuit, Maasai and Somalis, among others.
With these "Völkerschauen" Hagenbeck also appeared abroad and celebrated great success in France, for example.
"Terrible Shame"
After Hagenbeck's death, his sons continued the "Völkerschauen" until 1931 a group around Willy Karembeu from New Caledonia came to the zoo.
When people from Caledonia complained in a letter to the French colonial ministry, they were released from the zoo.
This ended the exhibition of supposedly "exotic" people at Hagenbeck's.
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Eye opener: It was only through this novel that Christian Karembeu found out about the humiliations his great-grandfather had to endure.
In their homeland, the New Caledonians rarely talked about the humiliations in Europe.
This “terrible shame” was absolutely “taboo” in the Karembeu family, said great-grandson Christian later.
The footballer first discovered the story of his great-grandfather in 1998 in the novel "Cannibale" by the author Didier Daeninckx.
In an interview with the French tabloid magazine “VSD”, the footballer made the “Völkerschauen” known to a wider audience again.
International media reported that SPIEGEL also picked up on the story.
Most recently, in 2020 in the course of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists denounced the lack of reappraisal in their opinion on the part of the zoo.
At the time, those responsible still replied: "The zoo is proud of its founder and it will stay that way." But now that the Hamburg cultural authority has intervened, they will hardly be able to avoid a reassessment by Carl Hagenbeck.