Early Life
Gebel was born in Schweidnitz, Lower Silesia, Germany. As a child he and his mother became refugees when the communists took over Silesia. His father was still missing in the Soviet Union when he and his mother started working for Circus Williams in Germany in 1947. When the circus owner suddenly died, his widow asked the then 18-year-old Gunther to train and take over which began his career as an animal trainer. Gunther Gebel took on the additional family name of Williams.
Read more about this topic: Gunther Gebel-Williams
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)