About Me
What is it about Germans and bears?Last summer, the country was held in thrall by Bruno, a marauding brown bear who left a bloody trail of sheep, chickens and rabbits behind him as he roamed the Bavarian Alps. By the time he was felled by a hunter's gun, he had become an outlaw hero and a media sensation.
Now comes Knut, a cuddly polar bear cub, who in his short life has become an even bigger star, with his own music video, glossy magazine cover, stuffed teddy bear product tie-ins and two daily play sessions at the Berlin Zoo, which attract paparazzi and thousands of visitors.
Knut even ignited a feverish rally in the shares of the company that operates this venerable, 163-year-old zoo. The shares, which rarely trade, more than doubled in value earlier this week, as investors sensed an opportunity to make a bundle off this adorable ball of white fur.
Gabriele Dehn-Knight, a German who lives in New York and was visiting this week, waited with her family for an hour to catch a glimpse of Knut. "The whole town is talking about him," she said.
A star cub is born
Actually, the whole country is.
Since Knut's birth in December, his adventures have been chronicled daily in the German news media. His story became a national cause célèbre when a debate erupted over the decision of zookeepers to take over his care — feeding him with a bottle — after his mother rejected him at birth.
Somewhat improbably, some animal-rights advocates and other zookeepers were quoted as suggesting that Knut be put to sleep, saying that his development as a bear would be distorted by his extensive interaction with humans. But with German schoolchildren circulating a petition pleading for Knut's life — and amid the subsequent storm of publicity — the zoo decided to try to raise him, which turned out to be a smart decision, at least financially.
Attendance has more than doubled in the last two weeks. Zoo officials rushed to register his name with trademark authorities in hopes of licensing deals. The stock speculation is perhaps the most remarkable barometer of his fame, since few here even knew that zoos had shares.
Germany has a number of big-city zoos that are publicly traded companies. In Berlin, investors hold the shares mostly for sentimental value; they receive no dividends and few perks, aside from free admission to the zoo, in West Berlin.
"Of course we need the money, but that's not the reason we did this," Heiner Klös, the curator of bears, said of the decision to raise Knut. "We are a zoo, not a circus."
Klös brushed off his critics, saying that Knut was a robust cub and had good genes, given that his mother, Tosca, was born in the Canadian wilderness. Klös noted that Tosca had also given birth to another male cub, much weaker than Knut, at the same time and spurned him, too. After deliberating a couple of days, he said, he decided not to intervene, and the cub soon died. He added that he thought Knut could be weaned successfully because polar bears are solitary by nature.
A big part of Knut's appeal is the affectionate relationship he has developed with his keeper, Thomas Dörflein. Dörflein has camped out at the zoo to take care of him. When he took a couple of days off this week, Knut wandered around his enclosure like a lost soul.
On Wednesday, Dörflein was back on duty, rolling around with the cub and snapping him playfully with a pink towel. In between, he took calls on his cellphone.
Klös spends much of his time on the phone, too, fielding phone calls from the news media. One measure of Knut's celebrity: Annie Leibovitz photographed him for the cover of Vanity Fair magazine's Green issue in May.
As Knut grows up, Klös conceded, he will go from cute to carnivorous, and his keeper will no longer be able to horse around with him. By then, he said, the flame of celebrity will have faded.
So the Berlin Zoo is trying to make the most of its good fortune. Klös said he hoped to find some licensing opportunities, though he said, "I don't know whether we'll ever see Knut furniture."
As Knut's play session came to an end, visitors struggled to explain why bears were suddenly the rage in Germany. "Germans are very fond of animals," Dehn-Knight ventured. "You know the old saying, 'People take better care of animals than they do of other people.'
Taken from the Herald Tribune--Europe.
