A few historians, even well-known aspect of East German history is the position of the fauna in the formerly peaceful part of Germany. Animals, was not that the public learned of this, allotted by the SED Central Committee Politburo and a single, system-stabilizing role. In the first years after the Wall could be held almost exclusively animals from the East to the zoo, and between Cape Arkona Fichtelberg. Buffalo or kangaroo, however, were prohibited in any case because these were animals from the capitalist West, the promise of a free world symbolized.
Unrestricted access to the exhibits, terrariums, aquariums, zoos had the East German in addition to the native fauna, only animals from the states of the Warsaw Pact. Even with lions, elephants, flamingos, but there were difficulties. Did the flamingos, for example, from the pro-Russian India, they were welcome. They came from the pro-western Pakistan, they were not allowed to enter. Overall, however, were exotic animals from the Marxist-Leninist chief ideologue rather viewed with suspicion. Because they were suspected to awaken in the GDR citizens the desire to travel. On consistent in their rejection of foreign creatures behaved animal park in Dessau, the only ethnically pure and suffered for centuries location-based game. It did not even have animals from other districts of the East entrance. The Dessau built their zoo by a nearby forest just put on a chain link fence. However, other zoos in the GDR could be described with a few words: blackbird, thrush, finch, deer and ready is the zoo.
opened in the seventies, the real socialist zoology for pragmatic reasons for the wide world. The former residence rigorous animal rules were not the East Germans discouraged from thinking of the West, but they visit the zoo in the Republic just spoiled because they are usually encountered in the garden a lush fauna, and then it should not even pay admission. Animals from the West were now being used selectively and instrumentally. You should stir up the fear of the capitalist world. Consequently, especially those copies were imported from beyond the Iron Curtain, which were disgusting and frightening. Scorpions from Mexico, Spain from tarantulas, crocodiles from Australia, blackbird large puffers from Japan and hornets, poisonous snakes in the United States. The biggest deterrent in the animal park Friedrichsfelde pointed for example to the reptile house, which housed more than a thousand reptiles and was titled: ". Deadly creatures from the U.S., Australia and West Berlin since the eighties It was in the category for the Australian reptiles even an artificial ozone hole. The security provisions have been deliberately and intentionally lax, the enclosures were protected adequately. For when once again a careless child to a school Komodo dragon had fallen victim to, then coined the spectators a more lasting recognition that in the GDR, but all in all not that bad.
The western countries was presented to us not only as a life-toxic anti-post-apocalyptic realm, powerful and brutal animals. Animals from these same so-called lethal areas of the planet were also happy collected when the socialist cause, ie the bond father to the country served. Sun was located at the enclosure of the koala bear, a display of the geographical distribution of this cute, popular especially among children bag vacuum cleaner. But not Australia, the true home, that animal was marked red, but the area near Bitterfeld, the then suffered so from pollution that could meet there next to the workers of the VEB Chemie combine as the only living beings in reality only rats and cockroaches. But since there is no East German citizens voluntarily went there to see the koalas in nature, probably hoped, would not fly up the fraud.
has nevertheless not stop the concerted use of the fauna by the East German leadership to the downfall of the state can. Responsible for the turn and the fall of the Berlin Wall was probably a fatal mistake of the SED superiors in dealing with migratory birds, or a mistake in the interpretation of the behavior of these animals by the people. Every autumn, the usual suspects left our country. But every year, returned a few song thrushes, storks, swifts and Zilpzalps, for many East German citizens of the evidence that in the other side of the wall was not so bad after all. In fact, the decreasing number of returning birds had a very different reason. Under Erich Honecker were defined as migratory birds fleeing the republic and they were released at the border to launch. So there is clearly more than the adopted 1065 Wall dead. It is rather in the hundreds of thousands.
SS
