Paul Eipper (1891–1964)

A very old story-book I found in an auction-box in my childhood and devoured again and again in those days for the real-life stories of animals.
If you want to know what zoos and zookeeping were like in the bad old days, this book is one depiction. It was written by one of the habitues of the old-school zoological gardens who thought nothing of buying wild-caught animals, keeping them in small cages-- and yet felt affection for his charges. He boasts of knowing all of the zoological gardens of Germany and most of those of Europe, and of being "especially fond of circuses". When he was writing in the 20s and 30s, the oldest, prison-style animal enclosures were slowly being phased out, though not to nearly as naturalistic habitats as we aspire to today. He was especially fond of animal babies, and talks with great confidence of interacting closely with captive animals, in quite an anamorphic way. As one can imagine in someone writing in 1932, someone writing in Germany (or in fact as a well-off, well-travelled, European man) his writing is littered with unconsidered eurocentrisms at best. I do not think someone who had read the same descriptions of certain behavior here used to describe the great apes and the carnivores had seen them used to describe other humans could fail to flinch. And yet, the childish adoration of the animals shines through.… (mere)