Polish Zoological Gardens: Then & Now

zoo_niedziwedz_nac_.jpg, default, Bears on the runway. Warsaw Zoo, 1974, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)

When were lions dragged through the snow in Kraków? What tragic story does the Wrocław zoo hide? And where would the Poznań zoological garden be now if not for someone’s passion for bowling? Zoological gardens, although mostly inhabited by exotic animals, can tell us a lot about the local culture. Let’s take a look at the early days of several Polish zoos.

The zoo is not for people

The first zoological gardens (although that’s not what they were called back then) were established as a result of the expanding of private collections. Archaeological research confirms that animal menageries were already assembled as early as several thousand years prior to the Christian era. The zoo as we know it now, in the form of a public institution meant not only to celebrate individual power but also – in accordance with the Enlightenment idea – to practice empirical acquisition of knowledge, first appeared in the 18^th century. The following century, in turn, was the period of a real flourishing of urban zoos open to the public. It was then, in 1833, that the first zoo appeared on Polish lands, established by Stanisław Konstanty Pietruski, the owner of an estate in Podhoroce.

By now, the purpose of zoological gardens has undoubtedly changed. While plenty of people involved (actively or emotionally) in the issue of animal welfare claim that zoos are pure evil and should be abolished, the ethical aspect of zoological gardens is not as one-dimensional as one may think. 'Zoological gardens no longer have the right to simply collect rare animals to the amusement of the crowd', claims Ewa Zgrabczyńska, the director of the Poznań zoo, in conversation with the Otwarte Klatki (Open Cages) charity, emphasising that zoos should continue to exist as long as they serve the animals themselves. The idea of the zoo as a place where living beings are presented for commercial and entertainment reasons is a bleak relic of the past. The role of such a place should be first and foremost to protect species threatened by extinction and to provide animals rescued from circuses, farms, and other grim places with a place to live.

A fire at a pioneer’s

Thumbnail — The Natural History and Breeding of Birds Entertaining and Useful, or a Meticulous Description of All Singing, Human-Speech-Copying, Predatory, Beautifully Variegated, Domestic, and Useful Birds: Providing the Newest Methods and Experiences of How They Are to Be Caught, Domesticated, Reared, Fed, Bred, Protected from Illnesses, and Treated. [Vol. 1],Kraków, 1860, photo: Polona National Library

The aforementioned Pietruski, the founder of the pioneering zoo, was a zoologist and biologist educated at the University of Lviv as well as an author of numerous zoological publications with incredibly charming titles. It’s hard to resist the temptation to quote a particularly long one:

Historya Naturalna i Hodowla Ptaków Zabawnych i Użytecznych czyli Dokładne Opisanie Wszystkich Śpiewających, Naśladujących Mowę Ludzką, Drapieżnych, Pięknie Ubarwionych, Domowych i Użytecznych Ptaków: Z Podaniem Najnowszych Sposobów i Doświadczeń, Jak Takowe Łowić, Przyswajać, Chować, Karmić, Rozmnażać, od Chorób Chronić i od Tychże Leczyć.

(The Natural History and Breeding of Birds Entertaining and Useful, or a Meticulous Description of All Singing, Human-Speech-Copying, Predatory, Beautifully Variegated, Domestic, and Useful Birds: Providing the Newest Methods and Experiences of How They Are to Be Caught, Domesticated, Reared, Fed, Bred, Protected from Illnesses, and Treated.)

The garden, established in the village of Podhoroce (today’s Ukraine, Lviv Oblast) was not so much a rich man’s whim but rather a place of in-depth and extensive scientific research. According to Historia Zoologi w Polsce do 1860 Roku (The History of Polish Zoology before 1860), Pietruski’s collection comprised as many as 500 species at its best and included, among others, exotic parrots and enormous Carpathian bears. The owner of the estate simultaneously conducted botanical research, striving, for instance, to acclimate various southern trees. Apparently, however, neighbours mocked Pietruski’s scientific interests and treated them as a joke. But the story of the place ends on a very serious note – with a fire. The garden burnt down in 1848, and the sources don’t mention whether any of the animals were saved.

A cruel liquidation

Seventeen years later, the Wrocław zoo was established. It’s the oldest zoological garden on the lands of modern-day Poland, one of Europe’s most popular zoos and – according to its current director Radosław Ratajszczak – Poland’s most frequently visited ticketed attraction. The phenomenon of the Wrocław zoo is related to the fact that ever since its establishment (a loud one, one may add, with fireworks and military orchestra), the garden has occupied basically the same area. Its 1,5-century-long history encompasses years of flourishing and greatness, breeding successes (such as the first ever birth of a Malayan tapir in a zoological garden in 1897), but also years of catastrophe which, of course, peaked during both World Wars. The first one resulted in the deaths of 90% of the animals, but the zoo underwent a miraculous rebirth. The second opening in 1927 marked the beginning of a new, favourable period for the place, unfortunately interrupted once again by the terror of military action. In 1938, the Wrocław zoo was inhabited by over 2000 animals. The final siege of Festung Breslau took the lives of the overwhelming majority of them – over 85%. The animals that survived the war up to the moment of the final battle in 1945 were considered a threat to people and designated to be taken down. Prior to that, the zoo’s inhabitants would get killed during the bombings of 1944 and later; starving, they would die in the terror of the roar of shots, under exploding grenades. According to the Wrocław press, the zoo’s employees keep finding buried animal bodies up until today, during renovation or construction work.

The terrifying image of the zoo after the city’s capitulation was described in the book Ogrody Zoologiczne: Wczoraj – Dziś – Jutro (Zoological Gardens: Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow) by Karol Łukaszewicz, a long-time post-war director of the Wrocław zoo:

In May 1945, the garden was in the state of ruin. Old fallen trees lied across the alleys, only narrow footpaths led around enormous bomb craters, […] the deer pavilion had been reduced to a pyramid of burnt balks and bent scrap iron. […] A rare Amazonian manatee – an aquatic mammal, a pygmy hippopotamus, three chimpanzees and a mandrill had died of hypothermia. […] Only 1 giraffe was left out of 4. The animals that remained alive were hippopotamuses, a tapir, a gnu antelope, a kudu, a few emu ostriches, among monkeys mostly yellow baboons – overall around 300 specimen, that is a sixth of the past inventory.

The post-war opening of the zoo in 1948 took place with as few as 160 animals of 60 species. But the garden has been reborn once again. Nowadays, with regard to the number of inhabitants, not only is it the biggest Polish zoo but it also finds itself on the podium of global biodiversity (confirmed by an inventory done in 2016, which helped determine that the Wrocław zoo is inhabited by over 1100 species).

A zoo as a gift

A zoological garden only a few years younger is located in Poznań. Interestingly, it may not have been established if not for… bowling. According to Łukaszewicz, the place started off as 'a modest preserve, founded by a merry company on the day of their chairman’s name day'. The chairman in question managed a bowlers’ club, and the merry company was comprised of bowling enthusiasts. They decided to create a menagerie in a restaurant garden by the train station, purchasing the animals they encountered on the way:

his friends gifted him a range of different animals, partly wild, partly domestic, that is pigs, goats, a boar, a cat, a duck, a goose, a rooster, a rabbit, a squirrel, a peacock, as well as a bear and a monkey bought at a Romani camp. Very pleased, the jubilarian put all those specimen in small enclosures of the train station restaurant and attempted to expand this small menagerie by introducing a variety of winged and pawed creatures. The joke became the foundation for what would later become the Poznań zoological garden.

- reported Kronika Stołecznego Miasta Poznania (Capital City of Poznań Chronicle) in 1946.

The menagerie assembled in 1871 started to grow, soon becoming a ticketed local attraction. In 1875 it was registered under the name of the Poznań Zoological Garden. The place became so renowned that at one point it even hosted Edward and Johann Strauss, both of whom happened to give a concert on the zoo’s grounds. In the late 19^th century, the former managed to attract 5 thousand viewers to his performance, on which occasion the zoo was lit up with a cannonade of fireworks. Back then, probably no one took into consideration how such a form of entertainment may influence the psychological state of the animals. But the history of the Poznań zoological garden – similarly to the Wrocław one – also includes shocking events related to people. The menageries on today’s lands of Poland also comprised so-called ‘ethnographic exhibitions’, which was a euphemism used to refer to the heinous practice of putting so-called ‘savages’ on display. For the owners of the zoos, the status of incomers from other continents (including the Congolese, the Laplanders, the Bedouins) was that of exhibitions. A critical artistic response to the history of European racism and colonialism was made by a South African dramatist, director and curator Brett Bailey, whose work ‘Exhibit B’ was shown as a part of the Wrocław theatrical festival Dialog in 2013.

The Poznań zoo survived both world wars with only a slightly better outcome than the Wrocław one in terms of the number of specimen. Besides, there were two post-war transfers between the two menageries – animals from ruined Wrocław ended up in Poznań, and remained there until 1948, when they returned to their rebuilt refuge. The 100^th anniversary of the establishment of the Poznań zoo was celebrated by the founding of the New Zoo – the second, larger part of the establishment taking up the area of the Biała Góra (White Mountain) district.

Sleighing lions

In Kraków, it all began with the pheasants. In 1927, in Mokry Dół in Las Wolski, a few kilometres away from the city centre, a pheasant farm was established. As time passed, a group of roe deer joined the birds. However – as expected of the city of Polish kings – the progenitor of the public garden, the royal menagerie, was located in the Wawel Castle. It comprised lynxes, bears, a leopard and lions. The logistics of ‘moving’ the latter was thus described by Łukaszewicz: 'Interestingly, the lions arrived to Kraków in the very midst of winter. The cages were dragged on a sleigh, on the snow, uphill'.

A proper public zoological garden was established in Kraków in the interwar period. In 1929, the woody hill Pustelnik was mostly inhabited by domestic species of animals (the then-president Ignacy Mościcki didn’t visit the newly-opened institution with empty hands – he gifted a deer). 'As we know, when it comes to zoological gardens and vivariums of all kinds, wars have the impact equal to that of a typhoon', wrote Łukaszewicz in his compendium, emphasising, for contrast, that the Kraków zoo managed to avoid the disastrous effects of warfare. The post-war history of the place began in 1963, which is when the zoological garden gained the title of an independent business. Ever since that time, the number of inhabitants of Las Wolski has been increasing: it’s home, for instance, to Poland’s largest groups of exotic felines.

A bitter story of sweet entrepreneurs

Warsaw’s zoology boasts a surprising link with… confectionery. The capital’s first post-war menagerie was established in 1926 thanks to the efforts of the confectioner Mieczysław Pągowski. What’s also worth mentioning is a 19^th-century attempt at creating a zoo worthy of a European city, undertaken in 1884 by the attorney Jan Maurycy Kamiński, privately a friend of Henryk Sienkiewicz. One of the shareholders was the Blikle confectionery. However, this marriage of zoology and confectionery turned out favourably for neither of the zoos. The first one (chronologically speaking), located in Bagatela Street, was closed after 6 years, its end having been was preceded by two tragic incidents: the death of a bear keeper in the enclosure and a fatal poisoning of the animals with bad meat. The menagerie on the 3 Maja Avenue (relocated from its original spot in Koszykowa Street) only survived one year – it was then consumed by a terrible fire.

Prior to that, of course, Polish monarchs had had their own private collections – on the bank of the Kazimierz Palace and in Wilanów, where the great animal lover Jan III Sobieski assembled his impressive collection. Admittedly, he was an animal lover very much of his time, considering how he’s said to have claimed that 'there’s no delight greater than hunting'.

A refuge worthy of a medal

Mieszkanie dr. Jana Żabińskiego, dyrektora warszawskiego ZOO, który w swoim mieszkaniu hodował różne gatunki zwierząt. Na zdjęciu: gosposia Cecylia Teodorowicz z wydrą, fot. CAF/PAP — Dr Jan Żabiński's apartment, director of the Warsaw ZOO, who bred various species of animals in his apartment. In the photo: housekeeper Cecylia Teodorowicz with an otter, photo: CAF/PAP

The official opening of the capital’s zoological garden in its current location in Praga North took place in 1928. Up until the outbreak of Wrld War Two, the place, managed by the zoologist (and Warsaw Uprising insurrectionist) Jan Żabiński had flourished beautifully – that’s where the first elephant in Poland was born (a female named Tuzinka). But the period of smooth development was brutally interrupted by warfare. Prior to the capitulation of Warsaw, the bombs had killed the inhabitants of aviaries and monkey houses, after which the largest predators were murdered so that they wouldn’t pose a threat when hungry. Some of the animals were killed to be eaten.

Żabiński, the director, along with his wife Antonina would shelter Jewish people in their villa located on the zoo’s premises. They saved several hundred people overall. Apparently, their warning sign against any looming danger was one of Offenbach’s operetta arias, which Żabińska would play on the piano. The couple were rewarded for their deeds with the Righteous Among the Nations medal and their laudable actions are the subject of the poignant 2019 documentary – Łukasz Czajka’s Of Animals and Men, in which the director included statements by the couple’s daughter, Teresa Żabińska.

An attack in an enclosure

Nowadays, the Warsaw zoo is a place first and foremost intended – according to the declaration of its current director Dr Andrzej Grzegorz Kruszewicz – to serve as a centre for the protection of biodiversity. Its purposes are to create a bank of endangered species’ genes as well as to provide refuge for reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds seized by the authorities from the hands of smugglers and other individuals possessing animals illegally.

In May 2020, a female bear (rescued from a circus) living in an enclosure open from the side of the ‘Solidarity’ Avenue was attacked by a drunken man, an event which rekindled the occasionally recurring discussion concerning the architecture of the dwelling meant for Warsaw’s two female bears. The animals were eventually moved to a new place, in the back of the zoo’s main area. Following the attack, the Polish Society for Ethics drew up an open letter to the director of the zoological garden – the document mentions, among other things, the outrageous violation of the aged bears’ right to a stress-free environment. Questions regarding the precise size of the ill-fated enclosure were brought up as well. Dr Kruszewicz’s extensive response claimed that the open ‘arena’ complied with all the norms and emphasised that the animal inhabitants knew the place well and felt comfortable in it, and that the only responsibility for what had happened lied with the vandal.

Missing the bears

The history of Polish zoos (or those established on today’s lands of Poland) has got its own hauntology. In today’s Franciszek Kahl urban park in Bytom one can find the remains of the first Upper Silesian zoological garden, established in 1898 and now non-existent. Fragments of a bear enclosure (two small buildings and a wall) with a white sculpture representing those predatory mammals have remained there, serving as reminders that there used to be a zoo. After the war, within what was already the Silesian Voivodeship, the zoological garden functioned only for a decade (officially, the institution existed between 1947 and 1957, although a small number of animals still lived there in the 1960s before they were moved do Chorzów). In 2019, one of the city’s online news outlets circulated the information that the outdoor café established on the area of the former zoo was awaiting a new owner who would breathe some new life into the place.

3D animals

At the same time, it’s difficult to deny that for many people, zoological gardens are (unfortunately) merely a form of entertainment, like water parks or cinemas. It’s this objectifying gaze that’s ethically questionable. Perhaps with time, thanks to the currently developing 3D technology, zoos will turn into virtual spaces and, rather than watch live animals, the visitors will be shown detailed, photorealistic models. Many may be surprised that such a future was already envisioned 70 years ago by Maria Dąbrowska. The writer, of course, didn’t mention 3D models, but in her short story revolving around the Wrocław zoo titled ‘Poranek w Ogrodzie Zoologicznym’ (A Morning in a Zoo) she predicted that all zoological gardens would at some point be replaced by cinemas. ‘Today, when confronted with the photographic camera, zoological gardens are a relic through which we uphold our nasty tendency to enslave living beings’, wrote Dąbrowska.

Translated from Polish by Anna Potoczny

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