History
Opened on August 1, 1844, the Zoologischer Garten Berlin was the first zoo in Germany. The aquarium opened in 1913. The first animals were donated by Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, from the menagerie and pheasantry of the Tiergarten.
During World War II, the zoo area was completely destroyed and only 91 of 3,715 animals survived, including two lions, two hyenas, an Asian bull elephant, a hippo bull, ten hamadryas baboons, a chimpanzee and a black stork. By the end of the war, the zoo was fortified with the Zoo Tower, a huge Flak tower that was one of the last remaining areas of Nazi resistance against the Red Army, with its bunkers and anti-aircraft weapons defending against allied air forces. Following the zoo's destruction, it and the associated Aquarium was reconstructed on the most modern principles so as to display the animals in as close to their natural environment as feasible. The success achieved in breeding animals, including some rare species, demonstrates the efficacy of these new methods.
Read more about this topic: Berlin Zoological Garden
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“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)