Schönbrunn Zoo in the 19th and early 20th centuries

The proposed project is part of an interdisciplinary project series with the aim of producing the first extended historical study of the "oldest zoo of the world." Coordinator of the series is the applicant, a Professor of Modern History at the University of Vienna specializing in history of science and cultural history. The period to be studied in the proposed project extends from the placement of the Imperial Menagerie under the jurisdiction of the Obersthofmeisteramt (highest imperial court administration) in 1807, shortly after the proclamation of the Austrian Empire in 1804, to the retirement of the long-standing director of the Menagerie, Alois Kraus, in 1919, at the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Central to the analysis is the development of Schönbrunn Zoo as an institution of the Imperial court during the rise of the Austrian bourgeoisie and later of mass culture. The connections of the zoo with the emerging institutional landscape of scientific institutions in nineteenth-century Vienna will also be considered in this context. The project will approach these issues by combining institutional history with history of science and veterinary medicine as well as cultural and reception history. In the process central questions of recent historical scholarship in the following areas will be addressed: 1. the changing relationships of science and the public in the bourgeois era as well as the history of urban leisure time culture; 2. the relations between humans and animals and the representation of nature in this context; 3. the history of natural science and veterinary medicine; and 4. the history of zoological gardens. Results from the project will be published in a scholarly volume that will also include results from the other projects in the series. An independent scholarly monograph on the subject is also planned. In addition, information and graphic images relating to the development of Schönbrunn Zoo in the nineteenth century (animal acquisition and mortality, food consumption, staff, budget statistics, plans and pictures of the buildings, etc.) will be collected in a data bank and made available to interested researchers.