PECULIAR POSTCARDS
A Leipzig lion hunt
14. A LEIPZIG LION HUNT
In October 1913, Barnum & Bailey’s Circus was playing in Leipzig, Germany. On the evening of 19 October, some of the circus animals were transported through town on two large horse-drawn wagons. The driver of one of these, containing eight lions and a tiger, had stopped to get some beer at a tavern before the journey continued through the busy streets. Suddenly, the horses stopped in the BlücherStrasse just as the wagon was on the tram tracks, and the driver was unable to get them moving again. The tram hit the wagon, and the nine animals inside were able to escape.
There was a thick fog in
Leipzig that night, and as soon as people realised that nine big cats were loose, they panicked and stampeded into shops and restaurants to take refuge. Whereas the tiger appears to have been a timid animal and did not venture out into the streets, all eight lions ran about in the Blücher-Strasse and frightened people. One of them attacked a horse, but the circus employees managed to dissuade it from savaging the poor harnessed equine.
On hearing that lions were on the rampage in Leipzig, the fire brigade was mobilised, as was a troop of 60 armed constables. The firemen applied their hoses and the constables loaded their revolvers. Unnerved by the powerful jets of water, two of the lions ran into the Hotel Blücher, bounding up the main staircase and scattering the guests in all directions. A lioness scratched on the door of a hotel room, and its inhabitant, a Frenchman, was nearly frightened to death when he perceived the nature of his late-night visitor. A brave hotel waiter opened the door of another room and decoyed the lioness into the lavatory, where she was safely locked up. The other lion ran all the way up to the hotel attic, where it was later recaptured by the circus employees using a large net.
The other six lions made a stand in the street, but the firepower of the police constables was too much for them: they all perished miserably in the fusillade of bullets. No human being was harmed in this leonine escapade, and the injured horse recovered from its wounds. The wagon driver was fined 25 marks for his carelessness, and the circus director was fined 100 marks for his indifferent approach to security. The escaped lions, valued at 30,000 marks (£5,000), were exhibited before the curious at Leipzig Zoo. Although offers to purchase beefsteaks cut from the gunned-down animals were turned down, the restaurant ‘Auerbachs Keller’ boasted a special menu,
containing lion’s tail soup made from crocodile tears. There were several picture postcards showing the police constables posing with the dead lions, as well as ‘funny’ postcards printed as mementoes of the lion hunt; the Germans clearly thought the wanton destruction of six attractive and valuable animals quite amusing in 1913. Leipzig would remain lion-free until September 2016, when two young lions escaped from the zoo, one of them being shot dead after a tranquilliser dart failed to slow it down.