HAGENBECK, heg6n-b'ek, Karl, German zoologist and dealer in wild animals: b. Ham burg, 10 June 1844; d. there, 14 April 1913. His father, a fish dealer, commenced a trade in live animals about 1852, which he handed over to his son Karl in 1866. The latter de veloped the business to enormous dimensions, sending out great expeditions to Africa, India, Asia and South America to capture wild ani mals. Every year four or five vessels reached Hamburg laden with the spoils of the chase. From 1875 he began exhibiting collections of natives of little-known countries, together with their huts, domestic utensils and fauna. The first exhibit was a troupe of Laplanders with a herd of reindeer; then followed tribes of Nubians, Eskimos, etc., showing them all over Europe. He brought over 1,000 animals to the Chicago Exposition in 1893, and has since brought vast zoological concerns to London and Paris. He greatly improved the methods of capture and maintenance of animals, care fully studied their nature and needs, and was finally able to provide trained lions, tigers and elephants ready for menagerie performances. He introduced family" groups of the most incongruous companions in one cage polar bears, tigers, lions, dogs, cats, rabbits and mice, all living — or at least performing — to gether with a trainer in their midst. In 1902
Hagenbeck purchased a large piece of land at Stellingen, near Hamburg, where he built an animal park on entirely novel lines, eliminat ing cages and barriers by substituting impassable pits around the rocks, jungle or other habitats where the animals roam about in an apparently natural state. He also started an ostrich farm, and succeeded by degrees in acclimatizing this bird in the cold region of Hamburg. An am bitious plan commenced some years before his death was a life-like and life-size reproduc tion of prehistoric monsters, whose gigantic and hideous shapes may he seen peacefully 'browsing)) in the artificial morasses and wood lands of the Tiergarten. Hagenbeck's sister, Christiane, has conducted (since 1873) an in dependent business in birds, handling some 50.000 heads annually. Like her brother, she also sends expeditions to Brazil, Madagascar and other parts for the capture of birds. Con sult biographies of Hagenbeck by Leutemann (Leipzig 1887) and Fischer (1896).