Early years and education Grzimek was born in
Neisse (Nysa),
Prussian Silesia. His father Paul Franz Constantin Grzimek was a lawyer, judicial councilor, and civil law notary. Paul Franz had been married in 1888 to Maria née Schmook who died in 1897 at the age of 28. From this first marriage he had a daughter Barbara who moved with her father on his second marriage to Margarete "Margot" (
nee Wanke). Bernhard was the fifth born from this second marriage after Brigitte (1902), Franziska (1904), Notker (1905) and Ansgar (1907). The Polish speaking Grzimek family came from Upper Silesia where they were farmers and landowners. His grandfather Joseph had learned brewing and lived at Schwesterwitz. The first in the family to move from the village to the city was Bernhard's father. He had been educated at Breslau, Marburg, and Berlin. Their home in Neisse had maids, a cook and a nanny. His father was politically active, a debater, and a supporter of the Catholic Center Party. He had been offered a position in the Reichstag but had refused it due to a heart condition. He opposed many of
Bismarck's policies including the separation of the church and state. His mother was a devout Catholic. The home had an extensive library which Bernhard explored from an early age. His father however died on April 6, 1912 when Bernhard was just three years old. After the death of his father, his mother Margot moved to a large apartment in
Ratibor where Bernhard suffered from an episode of scarlet fever. His grandmother Maria helped in the care of the children. Bernhard also spent time in the country on holidays with "aunt" Hedwig, the second wife of his grandfather Joseph, stepmother of his father. Grzimek initially studied at St. Rochus monastery boarding school. His step-sister Barbara gave some of her share of the family inheritance to support her step-mother and the children. A fascination with animals came early from visits to the circus and with their neighbour's stuffed parrot. In 1915 he went to the Catholic elementary school in Neisse. At the age of eight he took a hedgehog to class and he got the nickname "Igel". The hedgehog would later become his mascot, appearing on his visiting card and other media. He joined an animal breeding association where he took a special interest in Antwerp Bearded Bantams. In 1919, after World War I, Margot and her five children moved to an apartment in Neisse. The
inflation until 1923 strained the family finances and Bernhard's older siblings began to take up jobs – Fränze trained as a bookseller and moved to Dresden. Ansgar went to Innsbruck to study law and Notker went to study medicine. Bernhard spent two more years with his mother, travelling around by bicycle and learning to ride a horse. He also contributed articles to the magazine
Geflügel-Börse and wrote a pamphlet on breeding bantams. He passed his
abitur in 1928, not doing well in mathematics but excelling in German. After studying
veterinary medicine from 1928, first at
Leipzig and later in
Berlin. While studying he also helped his second cousin Günther Grzimek, a member of the Prussian State Parliament, set up a poultry farm on his newly purchased estate in Stäbchen, southeast of Berlin. He often took his cousin's children to Berlin zoo and received free tickets from the zoo director
Ludwig Heck. Günther's son
Waldemar would later become an animal sculptor of renown and the younger son Günther (jr) became involved in zoo landscaping.
Zoo director Grzimek was appointed director of the
Frankfurt Zoological Garden on 1 May 1945 by Hollbach. The previous zoo director
Georg Steinbacher was thought to have died but when he returned he was denied his former position. Steinbacher was dismissed from service on June 2, 1945 for having been a member of the Nazi party. In 1947 Steinbacher took up a position in Augsburg zoo with support from Munich Zoo director
Heinz Heck but held a grudge against Grzimek. He spent several years studying its wildlife there alongside his son
Michael, especially on observation and counts of large scale annual migrations. The documentary film
Serengeti Shall Not Die was written and directed by Bernard and Michael Grzimek with footage shot by Alan Root (who replaced the German photographer Richard Graf who Grzimek had initially hired) and Hermann Gimbel. It won the
Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1959. On January 10, 1959, Michael was killed in an air crash over
Ngorongoro crater while flying the
Dornier Do 27 (registered as D-ENTE) possibly due to a collision with a
Rüppell's griffon vulture. Grzimek wrote a best-selling book,
Serengeti Shall Not Die, which first appeared in German in 1959 and later in 20 other languages. Its popularity was key in driving the creation of the
Serengeti National Park. In the book he prophesied: In 1961 he created a demand for German tourists by suggesting on his TV show that a three-week trip package should be possible for 2100 Deutsche Marks to visit the Serengeti on safaris. This led many tour operators to begin such packages and he used the potential of tourism incomes to force African leaders to heed his advice. Grzimek began a campaign against the use of furs in fashion in 1965. He wrote an open letter about the use of a leopard coat by the Italian actress
Gina Lollobrigida and this was widely reprinted. He received support from the wife of the German president
Wilhelmine Lübke who agreed not to use fur coats. He also began a campaign against the killing of harp seal pups in Canada. He made a donation of $5,000 to the New Brunswick Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He showed footage on the killing of skins which led to outrage and the creation of legislation in Canada to protect harp seals. In 1969
Willy Brandt appointed him as Nature Conservation Commissioner. Grzimek opposed the use of
battery cages for chickens and later campaigned for free range chicken. Years earlier, it had actually been Grzimek who had prescribed the use of wire cages for keeping chickens, claiming that coccidosis was avoided as the droppings fell through the cage. In later times antibiotics made coccidosis manageable without cages. In 1975 he co-founded the
League for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) and bought ten acres of forest and wetlands in the Steiger forest near
Michelau im Steigerwald which he left wild.
Death , Tanzania Grzimek died in
Frankfurt am Main in 1987 while watching the Williams-Althoff Circus. He wanted to photograph the Siberian tigers for which Rainer Westphal, the press officer for the circus tried to get him a seat in the box. While the tigers were performing, Grzimek slumped and could not be revived. He was cremated and his ashes were later transferred to Tanzania and buried next to his son Michael at the
Ngorongoro Crater. He had originally wished that after his death, his body would be laid out on the African plains to be eaten by scavengers. Following his death there was a fourteen-year long dispute over his inheritance involving the grandchildren he adopted as his sons and his son Rochus. It had been estimated by the press that he had assets of 27 million marks. The case was closed after the family settled matters in private. ==Publications==