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00:00The End
00:29It's said that elephants,
00:30never forget.
00:37What memories filled the mind of Fritz?
00:43What sounds echoed inside?
00:56In the late 19th century, hundreds of thousands of wild animals from Africa
01:00and Asia were captured every year, destined for the cages of zoos and circuses in the
01:06West.
01:08One of these animals stands tall inside the Fine Arts Museum of Tour on the banks of the
01:15Loire River.
01:19This is his story, Fritz the Elephant, the unlikely hero of a tragic tale, the heir of the turbulent
01:28century-long history that links animals and human beings.
01:33Here we go.
01:35Here we go.
01:48Here we go.
01:50There we go.
02:02Here we go.
02:02Let's go.
02:11When we want to tell a story about an animal in the past, we have only little moments to
02:17work with.
02:18I think we always have to accept that we can't know everything about an animal's past.
02:27In the case of Fritz, we may not know the exact circumstances surrounding his capture.
02:32We may not know when and where he arrived in any particular spot.
02:37That is the challenge of a historian, a biographer, a filmmaker, no matter what story you're trying
02:45to tell, is to find those moments which can tell the story of somebody's life.
03:00In Paris, in the early summer of 1896, the cameraman of the Lumiere Company chose the animal attractions
03:07of the Jardin d'Acclimitation as a subject for their cinematographic experiments.
03:16Similar scenes were filmed in London.
03:23Wild animals have always fascinated humankind, but in the 19th century, it became possible
03:29to observe them in their hundreds in city centers in the West.
03:33At the time, it was the idea that we would better know the species thanks to these
03:37jardins zoologiques.
03:39In reality, there are very, very few of these jardins zoologiques, for the simple reason
03:45that at the time, these are not the behaviors that interest the naturalists.
03:49What interests them, it is the anatomy, the morphology, and when we want to fund a
03:55jardin zoologic, it is the scientific alibi that we put in front.
03:59And in fact, we realize that very quickly, it is not what matters.
04:04The Jardins Zoologiques are, before all, a spectacle companies for the public.
04:13London in 1828, Antwerp in 1843, Berlin in 1844, the 19th century saw the widespread opening
04:23of zoos, which drew increasing numbers of enthusiastic visitors.
04:26My sweet George wrote Victor Hugo to his grandson in his poem on the Jardin des Plantes.
04:32Come see a menagerie, anyone, at Buffon's, at the circus, anywhere, and without leaving
04:39Luteja, let us go to Syria, and without leaving Paris, let us depart for Timbuktu.
04:45What does the public see?
04:48Essentially, images of exoticism, images of animals that they have never seen.
04:53To see a lion or an elephant in the 19th century, it's like if we were walking on the streets
04:58of Paris, a martian.
04:59It's actually another life.
05:05It's also another life that we see in the 19th century.
05:05What we see in the 19th century, it's a democratization of access to animals and an industry of
05:12entertainment that affects, of course, the crowds.
05:16What is important, I think, is that it's not only the interest of the crowds for this kind
05:20of spectacle, it's also the construction, by the zoos, by the circus, of a goût for
05:25the idea of a world in hand.
05:36The second half of the 19th century saw the great European powers fighting over ownership
05:41of the world.
05:42In the old commercial ports of the West, traders took full advantage of colonial expansion,
05:48notably in Africa and Asia.
05:53It was against this backdrop that Fritz, an Asian elephant, was born somewhere in the
05:58jungle in the 1870s.
06:12Elephants, which were used for work due to their strength, but also for military and ceremonial
06:18purposes, became prime merchandise for traders and hunters who wanted them dead for their
06:23ivory or alive for sale to the highest bidder.
06:28Elephants in India, especially, are captured in huge roundups.
06:34It's called a corral method, but basically you fence in a very large area in the forest.
06:40The fence is not very easily seen.
06:44And then it has a funnel-shaped entry that goes on for hundreds of yards outside of that
06:51entry.
06:51And then large numbers, and I'm honestly talking about thousands of people, would be organized
06:59to move through the forest and push elephants slowly forward towards the corral.
07:05This could take days.
07:07And then as you approach the funnel to the corral, that's when fires would be lit and sound would
07:15be made and people would be screaming and yelling to frighten the elephants into the corral at
07:21the last minute.
07:26That's the way they were captured and had been captured for decades before Europeans started
07:32wanting to purchase them.
07:56If we assume that Fritz was purchased from Asia, it's chances are that he came by way of a
08:02a local mahout or the men who captured elephants for training for labor, for example, in the
08:09lumber camps and other kinds of labor in South Asia.
08:12The young juvenile elephant was kept sort of restrained in some way, whether in some kind
08:17of large pen made of logs or chained and often not fed properly until they became very weak.
08:25And then they went through a breaking process that involved essentially being beaten until they
08:31sort of collapsed on the ground and, as people talked about it at the time, gave up.
08:35This was the term.
08:36So they would have their spirit broken.
08:38And what elephants learned from that was that humans were not to be challenged, that they
08:44could inflict great pain and that you had to sort of respect them and try to be cooperative,
08:50just out of sense of self-preservation.
08:56Was he captured in a forest on the island of what was then British Salon?
09:00Or bought at an elephant auction in Calcutta?
09:04Whatever the case, Fritz ended up in the hands of European wild animal traders whose business
09:09was thriving.
09:12Also, es gibt sehr dominante, global agierende Tierhandlungen, die ihren Ursprung im Deutschen
09:21Kaiserreich haben.
09:22Einerseits Karl Hagenbeck, der in Hamburg gesessen hat, und eben Karl Reiche und die Ludwig Ruhr-Tierhandlung,
09:31die beide in Ahlfeld in der Nähe von Hannover sich etabliert haben.
09:38Stadtarchiv speziell sind eben einige schriftliche Quellen auch, einige fotografische Quellen.
09:44Es gibt auch einige Ãœbersichtslisten, gerade von Reiche, sehr Interessantes von 1870er-Jahren
09:52bis 1880er-Jahren Einfuhren von Wildtieren und auch die Preise dessen.
09:57Und überhaupt in Ahlfeld, jetzt weniger, aber in anderen Archiven, was sich doch immer wieder
10:05finden lässt, sind Angebotslisten, Tierlisten.
10:09Das heißt, Hagenbeck schickt beispielsweise an den Zoo in Detroit eine Liste von Wildtieren,
10:16die er zum Verkauf anbietet.
10:25Hamburg merchant Karl Hagenbeck would soon become the king of this trade.
10:31With the growing interest in exotic creatures, he wrote in his memoirs, my traveling men
10:36and hunters find themselves not only crisscrossing Africa, but all five continents.
10:43Karl Hagenbeck was born in 1844.
10:48His father was a fishmonger in Hamburg, a sort of hobby, if you will, of the father was
10:55exhibiting unusual animals in front of the shop as a way of bringing people in.
10:59And there's a story that the family has told for 150 years about that there was a bunch
11:07of seals that were caught in fishermen's nets.
11:09And in 1848, Karl Hagenbeck's father exhibited those very successfully.
11:15As young Karl grew up, he was also interested in unusual animals.
11:20And by his teenage years, he had become his own little business, and it grew very, very
11:29quickly.
11:30By the 1870s, 1880s, Hagenbeck is probably the most successful animal dealer in the world.
11:40It's someone who built what we could call a multinational, with companies on all continents,
11:47with an important polarity on the African and Asian continent.
11:52It's an entrepreneur who develops an activity based on several poles, the capture of the
12:00living for the zoo, but also for the circus, and who will gradually lead to dressing activities.
12:07And it's one of the main merchants of elephants who have an ad hoc infrastructure in Hambourg
12:16to export these elephants.
12:23There's enough evidence to suggest that it was Karl Hagenbeck who brought Fritz to Europe.
12:29One morning, the young elephant was loaded onto a steamship among a multitude of other wild animals,
12:36in chains, or in cages.
12:45It was a long and arduous journey.
12:49We don't know that they only survive the animals with a adaptable temperament, that is
12:54a small minority.
12:56We will attach their legs, so they can't move.
13:01There's the tangage, there's the contact with new humans, because the crew, it's not the
13:07humans who captured it, it's not the humans who dressed it, it's not the humans who kept it
13:14a long time in such or such comptoirs on the coast of the Inde.
13:18Finally, at every time, the animal learns, and it's a lot of stress.
13:24If you count a dozen animals in a zoo, you can multiply by two or three the number of
13:32dead animals for the capture and transport.
13:34You can't move.
13:39Ships often made a port of call at Suakin, where they would be joined by convoys of wild animals
13:44captured in the Horn of Africa.
13:50The big challenge then was to get them to Europe alive.
13:55It's not like shipping grain.
13:57You need to be able to move the animals as quickly as possible to Europe.
14:02The big changes here are the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which makes the movement
14:09of animals from Asia, especially from India, and also from East Africa, much more efficient.
14:16And then the trains. If you can transport animals by train from the Mediterranean to Germany rather quickly,
14:25rather than have to ship them all the way around, you can really have much more success
14:31at getting the animals alive to Europe.
14:36In his memoirs, Karl Hagenbeck wrote of a convoy of animals forced to wait in Trieste,
14:41the main port of the Austrian littoral, before being loaded onto a train.
14:46I will never forget the strange scene that presented itself to me when we entered the courtyard of the hotel.
14:55If a painter had seen this scene, he might have immortalized it under the title,
14:59Captive Wilderness.
15:02Elephants and giraffes, antelopes and buffaloes were tied to palm trees.
15:09In the background, 16 large ostriches ran about freely,
15:13and in 60 crates, 30 spotted hyenas, lions, leopards, cheetahs, lynxes, civet cats.
15:20The monkeys and parrots screamed with all their might.
15:25It's a commerce that takes an intense intensity.
15:29It goes of pair with this colonization, with this volonté
15:33to put their hands on the other continents.
15:37And to make these animals alive come,
15:40it's a way of showing the power of the nation who can do it.
15:46It's also a way to show the population
15:50some concrete objects
15:52of this mammalian on the other continents,
15:57and on the nature in particular.
16:03Every year, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians
16:09were wrenched from their natural habitats and shuttled around the globe.
16:16Fritz was one among so many others.
16:22His first voyage neared its end when he finally reached Europe,
16:26most probably in Karl Hagenbeck's menagerie in Hamburg,
16:30having crossed the continent shut inside a freight car.
16:36Perhaps it was the animal dealer himself who gave him the same name
16:40by which Germans affectionately called their crown prince
16:43and future emperor Frederick III.
16:49It seems probable that he was, by then, quite a traumatized being.
16:54He would have been stripped of sort of everybody he knew,
16:58and that will have affected his development
17:01because this happened when he was a baby or a juvenile.
17:05And elephants, they're similar to humans.
17:08They take a long time to become adults, really,
17:11and to mature psychologically as well as physically.
17:14So it's likely he was not feeling great.
17:19He was feeling pretty confused or frustrated,
17:23too cold perhaps,
17:25or just had a sort of anxiety or anxiousness.
17:31That's actually one of the biggest problems, I would say,
17:35in terms of the history of the animals,
17:39but also the history of the animals,
17:41in terms of the human history,
17:45that can be reconstructed by the animals,
17:50because the animals have no textuals
17:52found themselves,
17:53that's why,
17:55the animals have made up of human rights,
17:58that's why,
17:58even though the animals have been left out,
18:02the animals have been left out,
18:08that they have to be against the handling of animals.
18:12For example, there is a Giraffe,
18:13which sträubt against them.
18:16There is a picture,
18:18where a wagon was destroyed by an elephant.
18:22These are hints or signs for that
18:27they are not just,
18:29even if they are from their handlers,
18:33they are in Anführungsstrichen,
18:34but they are physical beings,
18:38who interact with their environment
18:39and bring the power and play spaces
18:44and have a lot of influence on human behavior.
18:54Alongside his trade in wild animals,
18:57Carl Hagenbeck was also known
18:58for his exhibitions of men and women
19:01from regions where the West was strengthening its grip.
19:07In sham everyday life situations,
19:11he exhibited Samis, Nubians, Inuits, Sanhalas,
19:14among many others,
19:16which drew massive crowds in Hamburg
19:17and other big European cities.
19:22It comes in the same approach
19:24as the animal world.
19:27Hagenbeck is not the only one
19:30who developed this thing,
19:33but he is not the only one
19:34because of the ethnographic exhibitions
19:37we have already found in the 16th century.
19:41Christophe Colomb came back with the Indians
19:44who were showing up to the court.
19:45It is already an ethnographic exhibition.
19:48Now, we will show up
19:49to the entire population,
19:51at least the urban population.
19:53It comes in this vision
19:55that it is the mission of the Occident
19:58to conquer these wild lands
20:00with wild animals and wild animals.
20:04We use the same expression
20:06of savage for everyone.
20:10The few voices that were raised
20:12were disparaged by a Western world
20:14so sure of its superiority
20:15and hungry for anything exotic.
20:23Meanwhile, Fritz discovered life in captivity.
20:27Another few months,
20:29or a few years perhaps.
20:31One thing was certain.
20:33His ordeal was far from over.
20:43I don't know why elephants in our world
20:48seem to tell a melancholic story.
20:51Part of that is the way they look.
20:53Part of it is the way they move.
20:55Part of it is knowing the experiences
20:57that they've experienced.
20:59They're sad stories
21:00because of the circumstances
21:03that almost all wildlife face
21:06since the 19th century.
21:09That's why we think of them crying
21:11on top of everything else.
21:12They seem to suffer to us.
21:22Hello, everybody.
21:23The circus is in town.
21:25Animals and acrobats.
21:26Here you see the clown.
21:27Make way for the kiddies.
21:29Let them take a seat.
21:30Here's a show for Christmas
21:32that simply can't be beat.
21:34Here and there an elephant.
21:36Here and there a seal.
21:37When we pull the curtain back,
21:39what will it reveal?
21:40Hurry to your places.
21:41Pay your humble pens.
21:43Everybody ready?
21:46Let the show commence.
21:57On January 21st, 1882, Fritz was mentioned
22:01in the American press for the first time.
22:03He was among the hundreds of thousands
22:05of dollars worth of rare and expensive animals
22:08kept in Bridgeport, New York,
22:10in the winter retreat of P.T. Barnum's circus.
22:23Now age 71, Phineas Taylor Barnum was a famous showman.
22:28For the past few years, he had owned a circus,
22:31which grew wealthier by the day.
22:33To the traditional acrobat and horse riding routines,
22:37he added acts featuring trained wild animals,
22:40which he mainly acquired in Europe
22:42from Carl Hagenbeck's booming company.
22:47And that's how Fritz made his way across the Atlantic.
22:56Soon, Barnum teamed up with former competitor James Bailey,
23:00who would become famous in the circus world
23:02by introducing three rings inside the big top.
23:06Together, they founded the so-called Greatest Show on Earth.
23:14The Greatest Show on Earth consisted of a tent show
23:18that had a very, very large tent
23:20that seated hundreds and hundreds of people.
23:23There would be three rings inside,
23:24so there would be simultaneous entertainment
23:26in the different rings.
23:28It also came with a menagerie,
23:30so it was sort of like a travelling zoo.
23:32And they also had some sideshow exhibits
23:36that could include unusual people.
23:43You have to remember that this was a place and time
23:47where there was no television, no movies, no radio,
23:52no colour magazines.
23:55Most people just, if they had a book in the house,
23:57it was just a Bible.
23:58People did read the newspaper,
23:59but a lot of people weren't literate.
24:01So very, very limited sort of media universe
24:04in the United States.
24:06So when the circus came to town,
24:08that was the biggest, most colourful,
24:10most amazing thing that people might ever see for decades,
24:13especially living in these quiet sort of farming communities
24:17where really not much happened.
24:19So when the circus came by, it was really a big deal.
24:41The modern American circus was born.
24:44Its greatness was measured by the number and size of its elephants.
24:48With the expansion of the railroad,
24:51which gradually covered most of American soil,
24:54Barnum and Bailey could now take their show,
24:56and its exotic stars, from city to city.
25:02For 15 years, Fritz would become a circus attraction,
25:06alongside other elephants he hadn't chosen.
25:10Each of them was given a name, such as Mandarin, Jumbo, and Albert.
25:15The practice of the names is not general,
25:18but it has a lie,
25:19especially for the grands singes,
25:24for the elephants,
25:26even for the giraffes.
25:28Jumbo, for the elephants,
25:30Consul, for the chimpanzees,
25:33Fritz, in this case,
25:35it's a good argument commercial.
25:38It's also a way to show
25:40that the animal will respond,
25:43and that he is consentant,
25:46that he is partying in the interaction,
25:48that he almost accepts his sort.
25:52There are many descriptions,
25:54at the time,
25:55that, finally,
25:57an animal who participates
26:00to the dressage,
26:01he is happy.
26:10Fritz's tamer was a man called George Conklin.
26:17When I went to the Barnum & Bailey show,
26:19they had a very intelligent elephant by the name of Fritz.
26:23He was the largest in the country at the time,
26:25and weighed five tons.
26:28I won a bet by teaching him in three teaching periods
26:31to sit up, hold up his forelegs,
26:33and stretch his trunk straight up in the air,
26:35let me climb up his back,
26:37stand on his head,
26:37and hold onto his trunk.
26:42And every little way I would stop him,
26:44lift my hat to the spectators
26:46in acknowledgement of the applause,
26:47at the same time saying,
26:48down, to Fritz.
26:50He would lower his head and raise it again,
26:52making it seem as though
26:53we were both bowing to the crowd.
27:07This institution of the circus,
27:10like that of the zoo,
27:12rests on a discourse,
27:14and on an ideal,
27:16it's not only a discourse,
27:17it's an ideal,
27:17of harmony between humans and animals,
27:21including the wild animals.
27:22And this discourse,
27:24this ideal,
27:26rests on the violence of the cliff,
27:28which is masked,
27:29because it's contradictory
27:30with this ideal
27:30that we want to have,
27:32but that it requires.
27:34So the history of the circus
27:35is traversed by this idea
27:38of maintaining the elephants
27:39at all times,
27:41in this framework,
27:42which is founded
27:43by the exercise of order
27:45and discipline.
27:51We often talk about carrot and stick
27:53as a form of training or persuasion.
27:55It was actually the other way around.
27:57It was stick then carrot.
27:58There would be a crew of people,
28:00and they would tie an elephant up
28:02in particular ways,
28:03so that a leg would be lifted,
28:06or force the elephant to lie down,
28:08or force the elephant to stand up
28:10on hind legs,
28:11force the elephant to stand up
28:12on a pedestal.
28:13And the elephant learned
28:15that if he or she resisted,
28:18there was a pain that followed.
28:20So the pain was inflicted
28:21using something called an ancus
28:23or we call it an elephant hook
28:25or a goad.
28:27And they had a very, very sharp point
28:29at the end.
28:30They were weapons, really.
28:32When you see the photos
28:33of elephants in the circus
28:35and in the zoo
28:36in the 19th century
28:38and in the first decades
28:39of the 20th century,
28:40the elephants,
28:40who are not engaged,
28:41are always accompanied
28:42like the shadows
28:43of a guard with this instrument
28:45that we do not see
28:47but whose elephants
28:48know the effects.
28:50So we have a sort
28:51of a permanent exercise
28:53of discipline
28:55which is not visible
28:56for the public.
29:07I think it is interesting
29:10that the animals,
29:12especially the animals
29:12in the relationship
29:15between humans
29:18and individuals
29:20are engaged.
29:21One of the things
29:21that they are well-founded,
29:23especially when they
29:24look at the public,
29:26as they look at the Dressure
29:28They are also vermenschlicht in the Dressuren.
29:34They are seen as intelligent as if they are going to the Dressuren.
29:40And at the same time, it's always amazing how they are being australized.
29:45Or how much they don't have to go to human beings and have to take a place for a different
29:52animal.
29:53So they have to take a place for them.
30:25At the time, little was known about the real needs of wild animals.
30:30Ethology, the study of non-human behavior, was still in its fledgling days.
30:36Awareness about the suffering of animals kept in captivity wasn't a priority for wildlife protection societies,
30:43which had only just been born in the late 19th century.
30:46But a certain Henry Berg, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
30:53did publicly oppose Barnum regarding the welfare of the animals he owned.
30:59But his arguments fell on deaf ears.
31:03There is obviously the reason for the power of these commercial institutions, which are the circus.
31:10There is also the power of cultural imagination.
31:16The idea of the suffering of animals is accepted, and it's normal, so it's minimized.
31:26The problem is that we can't demonstrate this suffering.
31:31And therefore, we are speaking of speech.
31:33There are some who say that animals suffer.
31:36Well, the director of CIR will say no, they don't suffer.
31:39A lot of public opinion will think that animals don't suffer.
31:43Because there is also a third explanation,
31:47it's that there is an idea that the animals who are in the living room,
31:53in the pyramids of the living room,
31:56the more they go down the pyramids, the more they go down the stairs,
31:59the more the material is dense.
32:02And there, the pain doesn't circulate.
32:06We have to deal with the roughness,
32:08that they don't look like anything.
32:10We have to deal with those animals with the good animals.
32:15Early one morning in February, 1889,
32:19a number of animals in Barnum's Menagerie became guinea pigs in experiments,
32:24using electricity.
32:26At a time when this brand-new invention was sweeping through the industrialized world,
32:30several debates divided public opinion.
32:33Should we use alternating current or direct current?
32:37Could electricity be used to replace hanging as a method of execution?
32:43Some newspapers reported on the visit by electricians to the circus's winter headquarters.
32:50The monkeys behaved like terrified children, but displayed their curiosity.
32:54One large baboon became particularly frenetic.
32:58A dog was also so perturbed it began to show signs of madness and had to be put down.
33:04The elephants revealed themselves to be the most interesting subject, and even seemed to appreciate the new sensation.
33:15I think that Barnum and other managers at the circus would have allowed electrical tests on some of their animals,
33:23simply because they knew that these animals were sort of impermanent.
33:28I mean, there really wasn't any expectation that they would last very long.
33:32You sort of displayed them like cut flowers, you know, you try to keep them going as long as possible,
33:36but they need to be replaced all the time.
33:40And the circuses, like zoos, which still do, you know, churn through animals.
33:44You're just always getting new ones because there's always some dying or being, you know, killed through injury or accidents.
33:52The public was so interested in the possibilities of electricity that probably that interest,
33:57getting the public to read about the electrical tests, was worth more than the value of those animals alive.
34:03Certainly the animal's experience had no value.
34:10Alternating current won the day, and on August 6, 1890, the electric chair was chosen as the preferred method of
34:18execution in the state of New York.
34:21It was believed that death by electricity was more humane than hanging.
34:27A few years later, the same reasoning was used by Four Paws Circus when it wanted to dispatch one of
34:32its female elephants, Topsy.
34:38This dangerous elephant, according to the press, had killed her tamer.
34:41A few years later, the elephants who come out of the field,
35:02including not following exactly the instructions, are affubled by qualifications.
35:07So, we describe it as fous, vicious, angry, and in perdition.
35:15Here also, because they're asked about the causality of their behavior,
35:22obliges to interrogate this building of captivity himself.
35:27So, to call it the elephant as fous, it's to remove the evil only side of the animal,
35:33and to the side of the individual who would be deviant by a normal norm.
35:41In the Middle Ages and until the XVIe siècle, we have been procured against animals,
35:46and especially against animals who are accused of having caused accidents,
35:51causing diseases, causing diseases, causing diseases on children's children, etc.
35:55An animal sauvage must either submit or be exterminated.
36:04There is no one between them.
36:28He is probably one of these Barnum and Bailey elephants filmed in 1897 in the early days of motion pictures.
36:37He even made appearances in the written press.
36:40His tamer, George Conklin, told of how one day he made Fritz more docile with a healthy beating.
36:48We broke old Fritz's spirit without doing him any great harm, he boasted to a reporter.
36:53Now, there isn't a more obedient elephant in the whole troupe.
36:57Isn't that right, Fritz?
37:07In the fall of 1897, New York became the largest city in the United States.
37:14In early November, its waterfront became the theater of an unprecedented embarkation
37:20as the greatest show on earth prepared to sail off to conquer Europe.
37:25James Bailey, the sole owner since the death of Barnum a few years previously, was planning big.
37:31His vast troop would tour the old continent for five years.
37:38Loading took two whole days.
37:41It was probably the biggest enterprise of its kind since Noah and his Ark, wrote George Conklin.
37:48Fritz was part of the venture, for the moment.
37:55I think a lot of people understood that the clock was running out.
37:59He had been causing injuries for a while, I think.
38:03And there was a debate in the circus about whether or not, you know, how much longer he was going
38:07to remain viable.
38:08There was Joseph McCadden, who was a manager for the circus, who had worked in the circus business his whole
38:14life.
38:14And he was not working day to day with the animals, so he had a sort of broader view of
38:19things.
38:20And he wanted Fritz gone.
38:23Joseph McCadden was managing the December Circus on Bailey's behalf.
38:28In his personal archives, he would keep albums with behind-the-scenes pictures of the Grand Tour,
38:33which began at Olympia in London on December 27, 1897.
38:39During the first two years, the circus visited 174 cities in England and Scotland.
38:47On top of the hundreds of different animals in the menagerie,
38:50there were all the performers and circus personnel that needed to be transported.
38:54Some 1,000 people spread across 68 railcars on four special trains.
39:06During the spectacular parades that announced that the circus was coming to town,
39:11as usual, the elephants drew all the attention.
39:16Among them, Fritz can be seen here traipsing along for the first and last time on film,
39:22shot by a British cameraman on the streets of Sunderland.
39:41The days repeated themselves never-endingly.
39:47After Britain came Germany,
39:50then Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands,
39:53and in each city, the same routine.
39:58The publicity team would precede the troupe to let everyone know that the circus was coming.
40:04Then up went the big tops and the seating.
40:08And for the animals, shunted from railcar to parade, a stressful life,
40:14filled with rehearsals, performances, crowds, and cages.
40:22Every day was an event.
40:24In Belgium, King Leopold II attended the show.
40:28In Paris, where the troupe would spend winter,
40:32President Émile Lubet was present for the opening on November 30th, 1901.
40:37Beneath the vast ceiling of the Galerie des Machines, all 8,000 seats were filled.
40:43The 150-act show lasted three hours.
40:47And the next morning, the newspaper Le Petit Parisien reported,
40:51phenomenal and gigantic, are insufficient as epithets for the show we have just seen.
40:57It is colossal.
40:59You leave bowled over, awestruck at each thing you have seen.
41:03The last even more surprising than the one before.
41:06It is grandiose, striking.
41:08The only thing that can sum it up is...
41:11American.
41:28In mid-June 1902, the circus moved to tour in the Loire Valley.
41:35Like in each port of call after the show,
41:38the elephants were led towards the train station.
41:41The circus had finished their performance.
41:44They had packed up gear and were walking through town.
41:48Fritz walking next to two very young juvenile elephants
41:53that were on the crew, plus various staff members.
41:56And suddenly the alarm was raised that he was going to start acting out,
42:01that he was going to lose control and start smashing things or injure someone.
42:06So as quickly as possible, staff like ran from the scene
42:10or herded the little baby elephants away as quickly as they could.
42:14Everyone scattered while members of the crew went running back down the line of wagons
42:19to try to find chains to control him with.
42:21And then an argument took place.
42:23It was an argument people had had before about what to do with this elephant.
42:28McCadden saying, this is it. This is the final straw.
42:30This is too difficult. It's too dangerous.
42:32Conklin arguing, no, no, we can retrain him.
42:35He's just irritable today.
42:36We can salvage the situation.
42:44I begged him to leave the elephant to me.
42:47But the orders were imperative and McCadden insisted that Fritz be killed where he lay.
42:53As there was no choice in the matter, I went about preparing nooses.
42:57I had considerable difficulty in getting them round the animal's neck,
43:01but after a while I got them properly placed.
43:05By this time everyone had plenty of courage and it was no trouble to get upward of a hundred men
43:10to pull on the rope with all their strength.
43:13And in less than fifteen minutes, after I gave the word, poor Fritz was dead.
43:37By doing what we say, Conklin can be posed several hypotheses,
43:40especially because it's not the first time that Fritz
43:44sort of the road and refuses what we expect from him.
43:49We can also emit the hypothesis of a physical problem
43:54that we often ask for the elephants.
43:56The hypothesis of the must is mentioned very often.
44:00There is a state that the elephants mâles
44:03are not only in captivity but intrinsically
44:07that leads to reproduction.
44:09So, the elephants are looking for a lot of distance.
44:15They are sometimes opposed to other mâles
44:18with an access to reproduction
44:19that will not be allowed to be the dominant mâles.
44:22So, in this state, the elephants live in captivity.
44:26And as it is a state that can't be forced,
44:30even if the managers try,
44:31by the discipline of punishment,
44:34in some cases,
44:35the zoo and the circus
44:37can offer no solution.
44:46The dead elephants are good elephants,
44:48under the last photo of Fritz,
44:50was added by the circus manager, Joseph McCadden,
44:53who was scared of elephants.
45:03One thing I do in my research is I try to apply contemporary scientific knowledge
45:07about animal welfare and health
45:08to historical documentation about animals
45:12to try to understand, like, what were they going through, perhaps?
45:14Is there any way to sort of propose some things?
45:18When I looked at this photograph,
45:19a famous photograph of Fritz that became a postcard,
45:22with him laying on his side,
45:23with the crowd sort of behind him,
45:26I noticed the state of his feet.
45:28And when elephants have healthy feet,
45:31the bottoms of their feet will be smooth.
45:32But when they're standing around a lot in small spaces,
45:36especially if they're standing in their own urine,
45:38which is corrosive,
45:40they can get very, very unhealthy, painful feet.
45:44Adult elephants don't fare well in this kind of mobile captivity.
45:48They just can't cope with it.
45:50It becomes too difficult for most of them.
45:52There are a few that can,
45:53but males in particular,
45:55just not designed to live in this kind of situation.
46:00It's hard to know exactly what happened that particular day in Fritz's mind,
46:05but I think we can see that if it hadn't happened that day,
46:08it would have happened later.
46:09This was inevitable.
46:10The circus was a dead end for these elephants.
46:24Before getting back on the road to continue the tour,
46:27which would end a few months later,
46:29the circus management donated Fritz to the city of Tours,
46:32which decided to have him stuffed and exhibited
46:35in its natural history museum.
46:38The separated skin and bones were entrusted
46:40to a renowned taxidermist in Nantes,
46:42who would spend several months working on every detail
46:45to give Fritz his new appearance.
46:56And so it was one year later that he made his return to tour
47:00along the Loire River.
47:15The fascination with elephants does not end when they die.
47:19The story itself becomes an opportunity for people
47:23to share an amazing thing that they saw.
47:26People tell stories.
47:28People write novels about them.
47:30So that story persists.
47:33This film, in a way, is also a part of the story of Fritz.
47:47In 1907, a few years before his death,
47:51Carl Hagenbeck opened his own zoo in Hamburg.
47:55He took great pride in presenting his animals
47:58in their natural environment, in open spaces with no bars,
48:02giving the impression that they were living in the wild.
48:06Carl Hagenbeck is an illusionist genius.
48:10We are here a few years after the death of Fritz,
48:12and he gives the public an institution
48:15that will have a huge success.
48:17It's an emotional, first of all, for the first visitors of this zoo,
48:21who tell their shock, their surprise, their fear, almost.
48:25But this idea of harmony
48:26depends on these constraints.
48:29And finally, these constraints
48:31are sometimes reinforced
48:34by this illusion of freedom.
48:35We think about the birds
48:39who live in freedom,
48:41out of voliaire,
48:43in large lands,
48:44and with their wings
48:45and their wings.
48:46We also see the construction of the reality
48:48that brings visitors to not to ask
48:50why birds who fly fly
48:52don't fly, don't fly,
48:54and almost think they're there
48:56by choice
48:58in this kind of Eden.
49:05So where is Fritz now?
49:07He stands tall, behind his large window,
49:11a silent witness to the tumults of the 19th century.
49:15He seems to be waiting for something.
49:18But what?
49:19Maybe for someone to tell of his ordeal.
49:22A tale written in snippets
49:24between the silence of the cages
49:26and the dust on the archives.
49:28The story of how he crossed the path of humans,
49:32those strange animals
49:34responsible for his demise.
49:59In the 19th century,
50:01the history was the science of human events.
50:03The science of human events,
50:06diplomatic, political, wars, etc.
50:10And then, from 1920-1930,
50:13historians have expanded
50:15the definition of science of human beings
50:18in the time.
50:19We wanted to make a human science
50:21equal to the ethnology,
50:22anthropology and sociology.
50:24And we were interested in
50:27these phenomena
50:27that were not only events.
50:30It could be
50:31the history of food,
50:32the fear,
50:34the disease,
50:35etc.
50:36And now,
50:38we feel that
50:39we need to be able to
50:39even enlarge this story,
50:41at least at the level of animals,
50:44but even at the level of plants.
50:47It should also be able to do it.
50:47It should also be able to do it.
50:49And so,
50:50there,
50:50we feel the need
50:52to expand the definition
50:53of science
50:54of living in the time,
50:56to have,
50:57precisely,
50:59this polyphony,
51:01this richness,
51:02which allows us
51:03to better understand
51:04human beings.
51:05It's not just
51:07choosing one against the other.
51:08It's all together
51:10to better understand
51:12the history of living,
51:13the history of the Earth.
51:14And so,
51:26that's what we're saying.
51:26What it is,
51:28that's not just
51:28It's true.
51:29It's not always
51:30it's not
51:30we can do
51:30anything about
51:30this.
51:30It's not
51:36it's not
51:37what I know.
51:41It's not