The Beasts of Vienna - Tiergarten Schönbrunn
Dear Alexandre,
Last week, I did it. I went back to one of my absolute favorite places in Vienna, Tiergarten Schönbrunn. This place tends to make me excited and happy and at one point my steps will probably get light and my cheeks will turn red from joy and I will suddenly look like a little girl dancing around telling everyone who is willing to go with me how cute and awesome all the animals are. Then I will get suddenly tired in complete exhaustion and need to be carefully brought home 😅. That is me in the zoo.
You certainly remember my piece about the Kaiserpavillon, the heart piece of the original Tiergarten setting. I don’t know, if you noticed, but an eloquent and polite reader wrote a comment underneath it. There was a paragraph in the comment that nearly broke my heart (the comment was in German, I do my best to give it here in English, although literal translations are really not my strong point): “When I am thinking about zoos, I have to think about the emotional state of the inhabitants, when I look at those beautiful creatures. Are their longing for freedom? I am carrying this with me every day, it is hard to let go.” 🥺
It is not hard to understand, how and why someone feels this way, and I would be lying, if I would claim that I am over that feelings. On the contrary, I suffer for example real pain from the way horses are kept in my home country as default (in tiny boxes that is, without a herd/family to interact with) and I had panic attacks in some especially horrible stables (which makes my career as a riding instructor very hard). And yes, I had very bad experiences in zoos as well and that includes the Tiergarten Schönbrunn (when I was a kid in the 80’s the Tiergarten was a place of horrors, but it transformed gladly).
It is true, that in a perfect world, a zoo would have no place. In a perfect world, wild animals could just live in the wild and it would make no sense to stress them out, by catching and exhibiting them. Sadly, this world is far off from being perfect and a zoo – especially a scientifically managed one like the Tiergarten Schönbrunn – has way more functions than some very old fashioned: “Look at these animals for our profit!”-zoos that you can find as evil places in children’s adventure books and bankrupt places of horrors in the real world. If you take a look at the homepage of the Tiergarten Schönbrunn, you can read about the zoo’s philosophy. It is a place for nature and species conservation, education, research and recreation. And when you read further, through all their projects, you will see that they really mean it.
Nowadays zoos are important for species protection, as some animals got extinct in the wild and could only survive in zoos. For example, Schönbrunn has a project for the Northern Bald Ibis that was once living in the wild in Austria but got extinct. It is an amazing project and there are now birds born in the wild again. I still miss the Przewalski’s horses that Schönbrunn once had, but they gave them to the zoo in Prague, which coordinates a breeding and reintroducing program. Only about 30 individuals were left in zoos as they went extinct in the wild. Now there are again free living wild horses in Mongolia, which excites me. Schönbrunn is also very proud of its Batagur (river terrapin) breeding success. They were given four exemplars of the highly threatened turtles as there were only 20 alive and managed to get the first hatchlings in captivity, breeding over a hundred since, reintroducing them to the wild with the help of locals in Bangladesh, who the zoo help educate for free about the needs of the nearly extinct species. The zoo also pays for nature reserves for the Giant Panda and educates around the world about its very successful breeding program. Schönbrunn was the first zoo in Europe to breed Panda cups “the natural way” 😉 and Yang Yang proved to the whole world that she can bring up twins all on her own, which was thought to be impossible till then. The Pandas actually still belong to China and were given to Schönbrunn for breeding purposes for later reintroduction into the wild (in the next generation, I would guess). There are more stories of this kind, but I should move on, right?
The animals for the Tiergarten are not caught in the wild, they usually come from other zoos and their breeding programs. The only exception from this rule are illegally kept animals or animals that someone tried to illegally get into the country. If officials find such an animal, it gets confiscated, but of course it needs a good place to stay, were experts will take care of it. So sometimes they will be taken in by a zoo. Last week I saw a giant turtle in the Haus des Meeres that some lady had brought into the country from a holiday in Spain. She had kept it in her bath tub, but it grew and grew… But that is another zoo and it will need a blog post of its own.
For my personal experience in a zoo it is important that the enclosures for the animals are species appropriate. Back in the 80’ies the animals kept in Schönbrunn showed signs of painful stress. There was an elephant who repeatedly made the same movement with its leg, because it used to be kept in chains. They were still using the old enclosures from Maria Theresia’s time. The big cats were in tiny cages going up and down their prison cells – an image still haunting me. There was a ORF documentary that showed and educated about these signs, so everyone was able to understand the pain. The Viennese people were upset and a new director was installed, who cut the ties to the government that kept the zoo highly underfunded. There were not that much visitors back then, as you can imagine. Bit by bit, they rebuild the zoo. The old excuse of “we can do nothing, because the buildings are protected” got blown into nothingness, as they build around the old structures. They still have the sickening tiny cages for the lions, but no one lives there anymore. You can go inside, if you are a fan of horror, but the cats live in nice enclosures now. I saw the tigers play this week. It was such a cute play, were they both ended up rolling around and showing their cute bellies. As a kid, I could never see such playful inhabitants. They built a big elephant enclosure, the ice bears – also part of a famous breeding program – have way more room now, they Giraffes got a brand new house lately and in the old enclosures there are now smaller inhabitants, like the Pandas live now, where the elephants used to live. Of course it is not the same as living in the wild – I would never claim that – but I see how much thought and care goes into the planning of the enclosures to give the inhabitants the best life, they can possibly provide. And in my view, the animals in the zoo play an important role in the protection of their habitats and nature itself. The kids that grow up with the zoo, build strong bonds with their favorite animals. Through that, they can feel passion about saving them and their surroundings. If you only have heard of tigers it is not the same, as if you saw them swimming and jumping and just walking by in their breathtaking elegance. If you fell in love with a diving ice bear or if you – like me – got kissed by a giraffe, you can not turn a cold shoulder to their ongoing extinction that easily. It will hurt you and it will make you want to change the world! The zoo also makes a lot of effort to educate people of all ages. So that we all understand better, why every species is important, why every habitat is needed. It forms the people of the future that need to fight hard, as it has formed us and it has formed the brave young generation that tries so desperately to get us into action to safe this planet.
The Tiergarten Schönbrunn is a great place for education, preservation and yes, recreation. Back when I lived closer to Vienna and I was suffering hard from depression, I sat down in front of the beautiful reef aquarium to get some calm energy. Sitting in the beautiful rain forest house does the same. Watching the cats, walking through the bird house, walking over the tree crown bridge, admiring the giraffes, listening to the lion’s roars…. There are so many things that relax me in a way that excites me. I love the Tiergarten Schönbrunn. It is the oldest zoo in the world by the way. It got voted best zoo in Europe again and again. I might not be the only one, who loves it.
It is open every day, tickets are expensive, but still people flock in. I prefer to visit during the week and when it rains (I like rain), because less people is less stressful of course. I bought myself a Jahreskarte, one of the greatest treasure’s you can get in Vienna. I have plans of some art projects, maybe there will even be a blog series just about the Tiergarten, who knows, what the future will bring.
I hope that my polite commentator will find some peace with zoos. Are the inhabitants longing for freedom? Probably. Everyone wants to see what is beyond their cage. But a lot of them will also appreciate the safety, they live in. I sure like my house and the food I find their easily. But yeah, I can leave my cage and when I get scared, I just return home. It is very sad to remember the truth that for a lot of the inhabitants there is no habitat, they can return to. Of course I try to forget that, when I walk through the zoo. I admire the animals there and I appreciate their presence and there lesson. They teach us all how the world should be. A world with room for everyone, where the freedom of everyone is respected and protected. I hope, my commentator will forgive me, that I will keep on dancing through the zoo melting away in the presence of all these awesome animals, whispering “cute, so cute” all day long.
Visit the Tiergarten Schönbrunn and fall in love with at least one animal, it is good for the heart my friend 🐙🦒🐯🥰
