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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
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8 comments:
Those old european cages all had built in shower heads and sprayed water on them most of the time. When they came to CW we helped Dr. Dan to knock them out and trim the hairs between their toes. I remember the size of their paws was awesome and their claws were nice and long too!
Although there's nothing wrong with this angle, you can't really tell it from this shot that Ursula was a memorably beautiful young woman, with extraordinary-looking bears.
Anyone know is she's still working?
Unfortunately, this act don't exist anymore, and I think we will not see something similar ever.
After the fall of DDR State Circus, some of the bears was sold. I remember that half of the act was sold in South America to Circo Suarez (I think that Fredy Hager was in the cage). They was the very same bears that later scandalized the international press when they was on tour on some tropical island without enough water (I confusely remember this story from the newspapers).Five bears remained in the Berlin winter quartiers. Miss Bottcher continued to present them for few years with Busch-Roland.
Manfred Horn, Ursula's partner in the cage, was killed by one of the bears in 1990, as is known.
In few years, the circus state company bankrupted. The company's last remainings was object of a sale by the order of the court. Some of the animal acts was sold to different german small circuses. Finally, the 5 bears were object of a court sale in 1999.
They was brought away from Busch-Roland to be assigned to zoos. Those remaining bears was the younger of the group.
I due to Mr. Christian Hamel from France the following informations about the bears:
-Maika, a female (at the time 15 y. old), went to Berlin zoo;
-Olaf and Tromso (males, 10 y.) are to the Amneville zoo in France;
-Kenny (!) and Boris was still at the German winter quartiers at the time but they are now in some european zoo.
Miss Bottcher is not working anymore. She has her retirement as state employee.
I did a mistake: the bears with Suarez was not Bottcher's, but the remainings of the other great german polar bears act: the one of Fredy Gafner, that he originally trained for Klant-Hagenbeck company.
The connection between german polar bears acts is another intense and rich topic of history between 60s and 80s.
The largest one was Carl Althoff's owned group. It was originally created by Krone in the 30s and presented by the Arndts for various circuses; then it was bought by Althoff in the 60s and presented by Iwan Dimitri, later by Tibor. In the early 80S the act displayed 22 poar bears, the largest on earth at the time. It was sold to Klant in '84 and I think was dispersed for various mixed acts, including Gafner's.
You can find a very short German biography by searching for "Ursula Boettcher" online. It says says she was born in 1927.
Richard Reynolds says - -
No! the largest ever polar bear act was that of Willy Hagenbeck - -70 of them! See my commnets under the first of the pics.
To Mr.Reynolds: speaking about Althoff's bears I wroteearly 80S the act displayed 22 poar bears, the largest on earth at the time". I was meaning the 80s.
Willy Hagenbeck's big 70-bears act lasted for a short period, up to the late 10s. He started in 1904 with 20 bears, that became 30 in 1906 for the water pantomime "Sibirien" at circus Busch in Berlin. The 70-bearisplay was formed in 1907 for a special open-air presentation at the Oktoberfest fair in Munchen.There was given 80 shows in front of 250.000 peoples.In Munchen was taken the series of pictures you mention. I have an original portfolio of them, one is depicting the front of the show titled "Am Nordpol". Willy used these pictures for the publicity of the "zoological circus" he started in 1908 (generating some confusion), but never presented this big display, probably anymore. Later, Willy worked for longer with about 40 bears. At the end of his life he used to say: "When I was 30 I presented 70 bears, now that I'm 70 I present 30 of them".
Richard Reynolds asks - -
For Raffaele De Ritis' e-mail address.
Reynolds is - - RJR@aol.com
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