The unbelievable true story of the Cold Warâs strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall.
âThe liveliness of Mohnhauptâs storytelling and the wonderful eccentricity of his subject matter make this book well worth a read.â âStar Tribune (Minneapolis)
Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, East Berlin and its zoo were spacious and lush, socialist utopias where everything was perfectly planned... and then rarely completed.
Berlinâs two zoos in East and West quickly became symbols of the divided cityâs two halves. So no one was terribly surprised when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms raceârather than stockpiling nuclear warheads, they competed to have the most pandas and hippos. Soon, state funds were being diverted toward giving these new animals lavish welcomes worthy of visiting dignitaries. West German presidential candidates were talking about zoo policy on the campaign trail. And eventually politicians on both side of the Wall became convinced that if their zoo proved to be inferior, that would mean their countryâs whole ideology was too.
A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything youâve heard before, The Zookeepersâ War is an epic tale of desperate rivalries, human follies, and an animal-mad city in which zookeeping became a way of continuing politics by other means.