Wessely Christina
Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien.
NTM. 2008;16(2):153-82. doi: 10.1007/s00048-008-0284-3.
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.
在19世纪和20世纪初，动物园是大众自然历史领域最著名的场所之一。早期动物园的贵族主人饲养动物主要是为了彰显他们对自然的掌控以及展示广泛的外交关系，而19世纪30年代起在欧洲各地由当地资产阶级精英建立的动物园则旨在通过“寓教于乐”向更广泛的公众传播其社会和政治价值观。新动物园被打造为与现代城市生活的狂热、喧嚣和躁动相对立的地方，成为纯粹、本真自然的空间，人们在这里进行观察能学到在文明的资产阶级社区中合理且负责的生活方式。本文以柏林动物园为例，通过展示大众自然科学如何受到城市娱乐和奇观文化的影响，对这些规划设想提出质疑。它探讨了在不断发展的现代大都市中心建立一个“自然王国”所产生的众多联系和富有成效的矛盾，并研究了世纪之交动物园作为“城市最重要的景点”的兴起对公众对自然历史的认知以及该机构的科学规划所产生的影响。
