Animal History in the Modern City: Exploring Liminality

265 Pages·2018·25.45 MB·English

by  Clemens Wischermann (editor), Aline Steinbrecher (editor), Philip Howell (editor)

Animal History in the Modern City Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History
Animal History in the Modern City
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Animal History in the Modern City
Exploring Liminality
Edited by
Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher
and Philip Howell
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2019
Copyright © Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher, Philip Howell
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 1
Clemens Wischermann and Philip Howell
2 Liminal Lives in the New World Isabelle Schürch 25
3 Liminal Moments: Royal Hunts and Animal Lives in and around
Seventeenth-Century Paris Nadir Weber 41
4 Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World: Liminality and
Nuisance in Glasgow and New York City, 1660–1760 Andrew Wells 55
5 Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold: An Eighteenth-Century
Case Study of Liminal Animal Lives in a Southwest German
Hometown Dennis A. Frey Jr 75
6 The Giraffe’s Journey in France (1826–7): Entering Another World
Éric Baratay 91
7 The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog and the Rise of the
Modern Slaughterhouse Annette Leiderer 105
8 It’s Just an Act! Dogs as Actors in Eighteenth- and Early
Nineteenth-Century Europe Aline Steinbrecher 127
9 Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death: The
Problem of the Stray in the Victorian City Philip Howell 145
10 Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush: Humans, Leopards and
Initiation in West African History Stephanie Zehnle 161
11 Betwixt and Between: Making Makeshift Animals in Nineteenth-
Century Zoological Gardens Wiebke Reinert 181
12 Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin,
1955–61 Mieke Roscher 201
13 Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses: Domiciles of the Wild
in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Cities Dolly Jørgensen 221
Index 239
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Figure 2.1 From Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las
Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585), Book
XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 1v.
Courtesy Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence 26
Figure 2.2 Detail from Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlán, Praeclara
Ferdinandi. Cortesii de Noua maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio,
Nuremberg. Impressa in celebri ciuitate Norimberga: Per
Fridericum Peypus, Nuremberg 1524.
Courtesy Library of Congress, Washington 29
Figure 2.3 Detail from Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de
las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585),
Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 68.
Courtesy Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence 32
Figure 3.1 Louis XIII’s hunts in Paris. 1 Château du Louvre (with annexing
gardens). 2 Galleries of the Louvre. 3 Gardens of the Tuileries.
4 Gardens of Queen Marguerite. 5 Hôtel de Luxembourg.
6 Saint-Antoine and La Grenelle near Paris (approximately).
7 Château de Vincennes. Map from Mathias Merian, Le Plan
de la Ville, Cité, Université et Fauxbourgs de Paris, avec la
Description de son Antiquité, 1615 (digital version provided by
Michel Huard, www.paris-atlas-historique.fr) 45
Figure 4.1 T. Maerschalck, A Plan of the City of New-York
(1763), showing locations and dates of tanning activity.
Courtesy New York Public Library 63
Figure 4.2 Brand Mark for New York. Minutes of the Executive Council
of the Province of New York, 2 vols, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits
(Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28 65
Figure 4.3 Brand Mark for New Harlem. Minutes of the Executive Council
of the Province of New York, 2 vols, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits
(Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28 66
List of Figures and Tables vii
Figure 7.1 Master craftsman’s diploma, Heilbronn 1802. From Hans-Peter
de Longueville, Kurt Nagel, Benno P. Schlipf and Theo
Wershoven, Kostbarkeiten des Fleischerhandwerks (Heidenheim:
Rees, 1986), with permission of Professor Kurt Nagel 107
Figure 7.2 Georg Emanuel Opiz, ‘Female butcher with servant, lady and
hawker’, c.1812. Reproduced from Bruno Brandl and Günter
Creutzburg, Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der
Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation,
1974), with the permission of the publishers 108
Figure 7.3 J.F. Schröter, ‘Rural butcher-wife and rural butcher’, c. 1820.
Reproduced from Bruno Brandl and Günter Creutzburg, Die
Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und
20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974), with the
permission of the publishers 109
Figure 7.4 Septimus Rommel (1778–1846), ‘butcher with ox and dog’.
Württemberg State Museum, inventory number WLM 9160 c,
with  permission of Chris Gebel. 110
Figure 7.5 Toy draft dogs pulling a butcher and his pig. Copyright
Nuremberg Toy Museum 114
Figure 7.6 Certificate of apprenticeship granted by the German
Butchers’ Association. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche
Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912) 115
Figure 7.7 Private slaughterhouse with modern interior. From Willy
Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild
(Leipzig: Killinger, 1912) 115
Figure 7.8 Public slaughterhouse. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche
Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912) 116
Figure 7.9 The modern butcher as business owner. Postcard titled ‘Wurst-
und Fleischwaren-Fabrik Brunner’. Copyright permission
granted by the Municipal Archive Munich 116
Figure 8.1 Training a dog to recognize who is still a virgin: Lang, ‘Einen
Hund abzurichten, zu Erkennen wer noch Jungfrau sei’, in
Rudolf Lang, Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche
Zauberey (Augsburg, 1740) 135
Figure 8.2 Training a dog to perform a trick: from Rudolf Lang,
Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey
(Augsburg, 1740), 9 ff 138
Figure 9.1 Going into the lethal chamber: from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs
Home, Battersea’, English Illustrated Magazine, volume
13 (1895): 445–9, 447. Courtesy Cambridge University Library 154
viii List of Figures and Tables
Figure 9.2 Coming out of the lethal chamber: from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs
Home, Battersea’, English Illustrated Magazine, volume 13
(1895): 445–9, 448. Courtesy Cambridge University Library 155
Figure 10.1 Initiation authorities visiting a town with their human-animal
costumes. Photography by Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Sierra
Leone 1914/15. Courtesy University of Cambridge, Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology, NWT P1150206 165
Figure 10.2 The Colonial Government engaged hunters to kill leopards.
Photography by Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Sierra Leone
1914/15. Courtesy University of Cambridge, Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology, NWT P1150251 166
Figure 12.1 Clearing up the rubble: making space for the new Tierpark,
1955. Bundesarchiv Berlin 183-29610-002, Zentrabild Quasch.
26.3.1955 205
Figure 13.1 Crowd gathered in downtown Austin on the Congress Avenue
Bridge, as well as on boats on the river, to witness the nightly
emergence of bats from under the bridge, 27 March 2016.
Photograph by author 222
Figure 13.2 John James Audubon, Purple Martin, Birds of North America,
vol. 1 (1840). Image released into the public domain by the
Audubon Society 224
Figure 13.3 Purple martin house in Mabel Osgood Wright, Gray Lady and
the Birds (1907) 227
Tables
Table 5.1 Animals listed in early modern German notary instruction
manuals. Source: Mannheims, Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt?,
272, 285, 300 81
Table 5.2 Non-human animals represented in Göppingen inventories.
Sources: StAG, Inventuren & Teilungen 82
Table 10.1 Categories of liminality in colonial West African ‘human-
leopard killings’ 164
Table 10.2 Spatial and temporal liminality in human and leopard hunting
behaviour in colonial West Africa 169
List of Contributors
Éric Baratay is professor of contemporary history at Jean Moulin University, Lyon,
France, and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His recent books
include Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2012)
and Biographies Animales: Des Vies Retrouvées (Paris: Seuil, 2017).
Dennis A. Frey Jr  is associate professor of history at Lasell College, Newton,
Massachusetts, USA.
Philip Howell is senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author
of At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain (Charlottesville, VA:
University of Virginia Press, 2015).
Dolly Jørgensen is professor of history in the Department of Cultural Studies and
Languages at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She has co-edited New Natures:
Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies (Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), Northscapes: History, Technology and the Making
of Northern Environments (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013)
and Visions of North in Premodern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).
Annette Leiderer is a doctoral candidate in history at Albert Ludwigs University,
Freiburg, Germany.
Wiebke Reinert is a research assistant in the Tier – Mensch – Gesellschaft project area
at the University of Kassel, Germany. She has co-edited, with Mieke Roscher et al., the
interdisciplinary volume Urbane Tier-Räume (Berlin: Reimer Verlag 2017).
Mieke Roscher is assistant professor for Cultural and Social History and the History
of Human-Animal Relations at the University of Kassel, Germany. She is author of Ein
Königreich für Tiere: Die Geschichte der britischen Tierrechtsbewegung (Marburg:
Tectum, 2009).    
Isabelle Schürch is senior assistant in the Department of Medieval History at the
University of Bern, Switzerland.
Aline Steinbrecher  is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz,
Germany, and editor, with Gesine Krüger and Clemens Wischermann, of Tiere und
Geschichte: Literarische und Historische Quellen einer Animate History (Stuttgart:
Steiner, 2017).