Background
Hagenbeck was born on June 10, 1844 in Hamburg, Germany, to Claus Gottfried Carl Hagenbeck (1810-1887), a fishmonger who ran a side business buying and selling exotic animals.
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Hagenbeck was born on June 10, 1844 in Hamburg, Germany, to Claus Gottfried Carl Hagenbeck (1810-1887), a fishmonger who ran a side business buying and selling exotic animals.
In 1848 Hagenbeck's father purchased some seals and a Polar bear brought to Hamburg by a whaler, and subsequently acquired many other wild animals. At the age of twenty-one Carl Hagenbeck was given the whole collection, and before long had greatly extended the business, So that in 1873 he had to erect large buildings in Hamburg to house his animals. In 1875 he began to exhibit a collection of the representative animals of many countries, accompanied by troupes of the natives of the respective countries, throughout all the large cities of Europe. The educational value of these exhibitions was officially recognized by the French government, which in 1891 awarded Hagenbeck the diploma of the Academy. Most of the wild animals exhibited in music-halls and other popular places of entertainment throughout the world have come from Hagenbeck's collection at Stellingen, near Hamburg. Hagenbeck was one of the first Europeans to describe a creature that came to be known as Mokele-mbembe. In Beasts and Men Hagenbeck claimed he had received reports of "a huge monster, half elephant, half dragon" inhabiting the interior of Rhodesia. Hagenbeck thought the animal was some kind of dinosaur similar to a brontosaurus and unsuccessfully searched for it. His claim made headlines in newspapers around the world and helped launch the legend of Mokele Mbembe. Hagenbeck died on April 14, 1913, in Hamburg from a bite by a snake, probably a boomslang.