Carl Hagenbeck

 ( 1844 Births ) 

When Hagenbeck was 14, his father gave him some Pinniped and a polar bear. He took a more proactive role in the animal trade and his collection of animals grew until he needed large buildings to keep them. Hagenbeck left his home in Hamburg to accompany hunters and explorers on trips to jungle regions and snow-clad mountains. He captured animals in nearly every continent in the world. In 1874, on the suggestion of Heinrich Leutemann, a painter and friend of the family, he decided to exhibit Samoans and Sámi people (then known as Laplanders) as "purely natural" populations, with their , weapons, , near a group of reindeer, as the animal display business was undergoing a downturn. Human Zoos , by Nicolas Bancel, and Sandrine Lemaire, in Le Monde diplomatique, August 2000 French Savages and Beasts - The Birth of the Modern Zoo , Nigel Rothfels, Johns Hopkins University Press

In 1875, Hagenbeck began to exhibit his animals in all the large cities of Europe as well as in the United States, merging his interests in commercial success, the preservation and "acclimatization" of animals, and bringing the "exotic" to industrializing countries. 1876, he sent a collaborator to the Egyptian Sudan to bring back some wild beasts and Nubians. The Nubian exhibit was a success in Europe, and toured Paris, London, and Berlin. In 1880, his agent Johan Adrian Jacobsen recruited a group of eight Labrador Inuit. The group toured Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Krefeld and Paris. One member of the group, Abraham Ulrikab, kept a diary during his travels in Europe. All eight Inuit were killed by smallpox; Jacobsen had failed to arrange for the Inuit to receive the inoculations they were legally require to have. Medical tests became a standard feature of recruitment for the shows afterwards.

Hagenbeck's exhibit of human beings, considered as "Noble savage in a natural state" was the probable source of inspiration for Albert Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's similar "human zoo" exhibition in the Jardin d'acclimatation in Paris. Saint-Hilaire organized in 1877 two "ethnology exhibitions", presenting Nubians and Greenlandic Inuit to the public, thereby doubling the number of visitors of the zoo.

Hagenbeck also trained animals for his at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904. Hagenbeck's circus was one of the most popular attractions. His collection included large animals and reptiles. Many of the animals were trained to do tricks. The circus that Hagenbeck assembled for the Louisiana Purchase Expo was purchased and merged into the B. E. Wallace Circus as the Hagenbeck–Wallace Circus. Hagenbeck's trained animals also performed at amusement parks in New York City's Coney Island before 1914.

Hagenbeck planned a permanent exhibit where animals could live in surroundings like their natural homes. Despite the existence of the Zoological Garden of Hamburg, Hagenbeck opened his great zoo, the Tierpark Hagenbeck at Stellingen, near Hamburg in 1907.

In 1909–1910 he supervised the building of the Giardino Zoologico in Rome.

In 1905, Hagenbeck used his skills as an animal collector to capture a thousand for the German Empire for use in Africa. He described his adventures and his methods of capturing and training animals in his book Beasts and Men, published in 1909.

Hagenbeck was one of the first Europeans to report living dinosaurs.