Bernhard Grzimek

Grzimek was born in Neisse (Nysa), Prussian Silesia. (present Poland)

His father Paul Franz Constantin Grzimek was a lawyer, judicial councilor, and civil law notary. Paul Franz had been married in 1888 to Maria née Schmook who died in 1897 at the age of 28. From this first marriage he had a daughter Barbara who moved with her father on his second marriage to Margarete "Margot" (nee Wanke).

Bernhard was the fifth born from this second marriage after Brigitte (1902), Franziska (1904), Notker (1905) and Ansgar (1907). The Polish speaking Grzimek family came from Upper Silesia where they were farmers and landowners.

Grzimek (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʒɪmɛk]; 24 April 1909 – 13 March 1987) was a German zoo director, zoologist, book author, editor, and animal conservationist in postwar West Germany. During the Third Reich, he served as a veterinarian in the army. After World War II, he popularized the study of Animals and an interest in wildlife in Germany, becoming the public face of Frankfurt Zoo, producing a popular German magazine called Das Tier, giving radio talks and appearing on a popular television series Ein Platz für Tiere [A place for animals] in the 1950s and 60s, apart from producing a multi-volume encyclopedia on Animals. He wrote another book Kein Platz für wilde Tiere [No Place for Wild Animals] (1954) which was later produced as a documentary on the problems of African wildlife. Along with his son Michael Grzimek he produced a documentary Serengeti Shall Not Die which won an Oscar. He was involved in popularizing African wildlife and was involved in wildlife Conservation in Africa, particularly in the Serengeti. He served as a government advisor on Conservation and campaigned against the use of animal furs for fashion. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym "Clemens Hoffbauer".

Grzimek was the editor-in-chief of (and author of a number of articles in) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, a massive and monumental encyclopedia of animal life. After publication in Germany in 1968, the encyclopedia was translated into English and published in 1975 in 13 volumes (covering lower life forms, insects and other invertebrates, fish, amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals) plus three additional volumes on Ecology, Ethology and Evolution.

The 1975 work was issued in both hardback and less expensive paperback editions and became a standard reference work. After Grzimek's death, the volumes on Mammals were revised, and republished in both German and then in English.

In 2004, the entire encyclopedia was revised and published in a new and expanded edition with Michael Hutchins as the new editor in chief.

Grzimek died in Frankfurt am Main in 1987 while watching the Circus Williams-Althoff.

English Wikipedia