Knautschke

Born in 1943 during an air raid, the rotund hippo calf was to become a firm favourite amongst zoo-going Berliners during the troubled years of the war and featured in postcards and footage shown in cinemas.

Unfortunately, the Berlin zoo, due to its position next to a Nazi flak tower and a network of bunkers, was to become a strategic target for Allied bombing raids during the Second World War and was hit numerous times during the six years of the conflict, killing both people and animals.

Nevertheless, it was the closing year of the war in 1945, which was to prove to be the most devastating of all, as by April the Soviet army had closed in on the city and launched a ferocious artillery bombardment of the area surrounding the zoo, attempting to wipe out Nazi resistance.

The house and pool where the zoo's hippos were kept were destroyed by a bomb blast, which resulted in Knautschke's mother being mortally wounded by shrapnel and bleeding to death; however, the infant hippo miraculously managed to survive, albeit with injuries.

Knautschke was rescued from the smoking ruins of the zoo by keepers who in the days and weeks that followed tried desperately to keep him alive by tending his wounds, bathing him in water and feeding meagre rations of vegetables, eventually succeeding in nursing the little hippo back to health.

In the bleak post-war period, Knautschke the hippo was to become something of a symbol of resilience and the will to endure amongst the Berlin public, and once his story became widely known, Berliners soon began to bring their own scarce food rations to the zoo for him despite the enormous economic pressures the country was then experiencing.