The `Exotic' as Mass Entertainment: Denmark 1878—1909

1 Copenhagen Zoo archive. Account book for ticket sales 1901. (It should be noted that the section of the archive on pre-second world war material is kept in a basement, unsorted and randomly arranged, and has not been signi®cantly touched since the end of the war. Hence, despite my weeks in the archive, some valuable documents may still await discovery.) I use the word `exotic' as a common denominator to describe the people who were on display because the exhibitions were viewed as exotic at the time, and it was this aspect of difference and strangeness that drew audiences to them. The Indians were most probably from the same region in South India and spoke the same language.

2 Jesper Schou, `Etnogra®ske karavaner', Stofskifte. Tidsskrift for antropologi (Vol. 16, 1987/88), p. 58.

3 Jytte Thordal, `Om hof-morianere of udstilling af levende mennesker', in Danskeren og den ádle Vilde. Vore forestillinger og os selv og andre folk i fortid og nutid ( Aarhus, Hovedland , 1987), p. 55.

4 Jesper Schou, op. cit., pp. 58 ff.

The `other' is here and elsewhere to be understood in Edward Said's sense of the term. See Edward Said, Orientalism ( London, Penguin , 1978).

and Antoinette Burton (ed.), Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities ( London and New York, Routledge , 1999).

7 Carl Hagenbeck, Beasts and Men ( London, Longmans, Green, and Co. , 1909), p. 16. This is the translation and abridgement of his autobiography, Von Tieren und Menschen: Erlebnisse und Erfarungen (Berlin, Vita Deutsches Verlageshaus, 1908). For citations I use the English translation where it is unabridged in order to get the most correct early twentieth-century English, but where the text has been abridged I have translated from the original German autobiography.

8 The word Lapland comes from the Swedish `Lapp' and `Land' which translate as `simpleton' and `land' — Lapland therefore is the land where the simpletons live. The people labelled Laplanders traditionally refer to themselves as Saami.

9 Carl Hagenbeck, Von Tieren und Menschen, op. cit., p. 82.

10 Carl Hagenbeck, Beasts and Men, op. cit., pp. 16 and 2 respectively.

The mention of dirt corresponds well with the period's attention and sensitivity to dirt and smells and its obsession with hygiene. See, for instance, Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant ( Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press , 1986).

12 Zoo archives. I am especially grateful to Jesper Schou, op. cit., pp. 63 ff., for drawing up a great part of this list. Of the locations mentioned, the National was Copenhagen's most fashionable entertainment place for the middle and upper classes in the late nineteenth century; Circus Schumann was (and is) a travelling national circus; Circus Varieíteí was an establishment in Copenhagen for the middle and lower classes known for its daring entertainment such as dancing girls; the Garden of St Ravnsborg is a park on the outskirts of Copenhagen; the Circus building was (and is) a big entertainment venue hosting theatrical performances, exhibitions and so on in the centre of Copenhagen, of which Circussalen is a part. The groups listed are for the most part self-explanatory — the `Cannibals' were Australian Aboriginals and the Harem was drawn from the Ottoman empire.

13 See account book 1901, zoo archive box 1901.

14 Hagenbeck, Von Tieren und Menschen, op. cit., p. 89.

15 Ibid., p. 96.

16 Ibid., p. 101.

17 Ibid., pp. 89 ff.

18 Jesper Schou, op. cit., p. 57.

19 The Danish Naturlighed, like the German NatuÈrlichkeit, I here translate as `naturalness'. Naturlighed implies that one behaves as one would if one had not been infiuenced by any foreign (i.e. non-nature) elements like civilisation or culture. To be `natural' implies to act without any restrictions or inhibitions.

20 Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-MuÈller, Hagenbeck (1844—1913). Tierhandel und Schaustellungen in deutschen Keiserreich, p. 147. The Copenhagen Zoo archive has advertisements for the Kirghiz exhibition (1900) and the Indian exhibition (1901), stressing the naturalness of the exhibited people (box 1900 and box 1901).

21 Carl Hagenbeck, Beasts and Men, op. cit., p. 16.

22 See, for instance, Heinrich Leutemann, Lebensbescreibung des ThierhaÈndlers Carl Hagenbeck ( Hamburg, Selbstverlag von Carl Hagenbeck (published by Carl Hagen-beck ), 1887), p. 66. Echte translates directly as `real' or `genuine'.

Manfred Vasold, Rudolf Virchow — der grosse Artz und Politiker ( Berlin, Stapp , 1982).

24 Politiken (18 July 1897).

25 Politiken (20 June 1901). See Copenhagen Zoo archive, box 1901, for a copy of the correspondence between Schiùtt and Madsen.

26 Zoo archive. Account book for ticket sales 1901 and box 1901.

27 Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-MuÈller, op. cit., pp. 163 ff. Timothy Mitchell ®nds the same kind of stereotyping at play at the Egyptian exhibition at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. See Timothy Mitchell, `Orientalism and the exhibitionary order' in Colonialism and Culture ( Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press , 1992), pp. 289-319.

or Ole Hùiris (ed.), Dansk mental geogra® ( Viborg, Aarhus Universitetsforlag , 1987).

29 Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-MuÈller, op. cit., p. 160.

30 Leutemann, op. cit., p. 62

31 Politiken (18 April 1886). See Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-MuÈller, op. cit., p. 159 for the negative reception of the Australian exhibition in Germany. A clear contrast to the European male view of all Aboriginal women as sexually unattractive and ugly, is the European view of Polynesian woman, who were always described as attractive, sensual and beautiful. See for instance Alice Bulland, Exile to Paradise, ( Stanford University Press , 2001) and Ole Hùiris (ed.), op. cit.

32 Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-MuÈller, op. cit., pp. 146 ff. and 157.

33 See Young, op. cit., pp. 93 and 122.

34 Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-MuÈller, op. cit., p. 146.

35 See for instance Anne McClintock, op. cit., p. 38 for illustrations of the family tree.

36 Rendered after Jytte Thorndal, op. cit., p. 58.

37 Leutemann, op. cit., p. 62.

or Teun A. Van Dijk, `Opinions and ideologies in the press', in Approaches to Media Discourse ( Oxford, Blackwell , 1998), pp. 21-64.

39 Said, op. cit., p. 3.

40 See for instance Ann Laura Stoler, Races and the Education for Desire ( Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press , 1996), pp. 6 ff.

41 Politiken (29 December 1888).

42 Leutemann, op. cit., p. 55.

43 Politiken (19 June 1898).

44 Politiken (20 June 1896).

45 Young, op. cit., p. 175.

46 Koppel in Politiken (19 June 1898).

47 Johannes Madsen in Politiken (31 June 1902).

48 Politiken (31 July 1902). Similarly, Politiken reported from the Bedouin exhibition in 1897 that the exhibited men had to be locked up at night in order to prevent them from bothering, i.e. engaging sexually with, Danish women, See Politiken (19 July 1897).

49 Rikke Andreassen, `Anatomisk Have', Ud&Se (September 1999), p. 62.

50 Cited after Jytte Thorndal, op. cit., p. 63.

51 Young, op. cit., pp. 95, 101.

52 See Frances Gouda, op. cit., pp. 168, 184 ff. and 191 ff.

53 See, for instance, Ann Laura Stoler, `Sexual affronts and racial frontiers' op. cit., p. 199, or Anne McClintock, op. cit., p. 47.

54 During the Danish national festival `Images of the World' in August 2000, a group of Mexican street children and a group of artists from Ceylon were `imported' and shown every day in a constructed market area called the `Images Village'. Just as in the exhibitions from the Hagenbeck era, the Mexicans and Ceylonese were mainly displaying their daily `authentic' life.

55 Zoo archive account book for 1902.