Day 1: Zoo Berlin (1866) - Der Führer im Zoologischen Garten zu Berlin
So; the first guidebook I will be highlighting as part of this thread will the oldest item in my guidebook collection at over 155 years old; by coincidence, it so happens that it was released in the exact same year that my great-great grandmother Elizabeth Ann Younger was born, something which has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the significance of the guidebook, nor on any other pertinent factor as far as those reading this post will be concerned, but it *does* provide a useful little milestone in my brain to aid in picturing just how long ago it was released. Perhaps more interesting to the wider forum population is the observation that given the fact that the unification of Germany as a single country as we would – more or less – recognise it did not occur until 1870, at the end of the Austro-Prussian War, this is *not* a “German” guidebook per se; rather, it is a guidebook from the Kingdom of Prussia, released in the opening months of the aforementioned war.
This is also quite a recent addition to my collection, having fallen into my hands only a few months ago by pure happenstance; one of my usual online haunts when looking for interesting second-hand books of any sort is Abebooks, a site which serves as a marketplace for independent bookstores around the world, and when performing one of the various keyword searches I check every day or two I stumbled across a newly-added listing for a Zoo Berlin guidebook. None of the descriptive details – page number, cited author, precise title and so forth -seemed to fit any guidebook I knew to exist, and the alleged year of release sounded FAR too old for a book being sold as cheaply as was the case… but given the aforementioned low price of the book (around £15 plus postage from Germany) I thought it was worth the gamble.
On arrival, it was immediately clear to me that this was something special – it was indeed as old as the listing had claimed, and was incredibly delicate to the touch. In fact, to this date I have literally handled it only a half-dozen times, and that as briefly as possible; in order to look through the guidebook, in order to scan select pages, and to place it in acid-free protective containment. At some point I intend to scan the remaining pages, so that a full record of the contents of this guidebook is preserved; as far as I have been able to gather subsequent to purchasing this guidebook, having asked a number of individuals in the wider zoo guidebook community, no one appears to have come across *any* other extant copies of this edition. Given the utter devastation which hit Zoo Berlin – and the wider city – during the Second World War it is unsurprising that several 19th century guidebooks issued by the collection are now known only to exist through mentions in the reference sections of surviving books and documents; perhaps other copies of this particular edition *do* exist somewhere, but in case they do not, it is more-or-less my duty both as a historian and a zoo enthusiast to ensure that a full record of the guidebook is created now.
There follows a handful of select scanned pages from the guidebook; firstly, a double-page spread containing discussion of the Monkey House and the inhabitants within, along with a rather excellent illustration of the structure in question; secondly, a double-page spread containing discussion of the Cassowary House and environs, along with an equally-good illustration of said structure; and finally, the rear cover of the guidebook, which as one can see contains discussion of the final few enclosures on the walkthrough account of the zoo, along with an illustration of what - from the context at hand - would seem to be a cattle house given the discussion below regarding the domestic Yak held at the collection.
As one can see, the typeface is heavily stylised - something which is the case for many of my older German-language guidebooks - which renders it somewhat tricky to read, but I have been slowly trying to learn how to do so given the wealth of information regarding the early history of the zoo which this and other early Berlin guidebooks will contain, much of which I imagine has never been published in English!
The one major fault with this particular item barring how fragile it is – as the scanned pages show, they have come loose from the original stitching holding them together with the mere action of opening the guidebook and placing it in the scanner – is the fact that it lacks a map, something which judging from the numerical references located throughout wherever an exhibit is cited *was* present alongside the guidebook when originally issued, although whether this was as an insert within the pages, a separate document or otherwise I may never know.
I look forward to any questions, remarks or other such feedback you have to offer! I strongly suspect that I will not have nearly as much to say about many of the guidebooks that will follow, incidentally, so I beg your forgiveness if this post has drawn a little long!
last year when attending the Zoohistorica event at NaturZoo Rheine I had an interesting discussion with a few German zoo enthusiasts and professionals on the subject, and the fact that the zoo was entirely uninterested in my offer to donate my copy of the 1866 guidebook (which seems to be the only extant copy as far as anyone I have consulted can tell) to their archives.
I selected it as the first to be highlighted within my thread on the subject of zoo guidebooks a few years ago, so I shall quote my post - which includes the story of how it came into my possession and images from within the guidebook itself - below:
Not the brightest, me
