Hagenbeck, << HAH gehn behk, >> Carl (1844-1913), organized the type of trained wild animal acts that are presented today. He was born on June 10, 1844, in Hamburg, Germany, and operated a nearby zoo. His father, a fishmonger, made a hobby of collecting and training a few animals. Hagenbeck decided when he was 12 to collect and train animals as a career. One of his first and biggest orders came from the American showman P. T. Barnum.
Hagenbeck traveled to the United States for the first time in 1886. His trained wild animals were a sensation at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The spectacle of a lion riding a horse and a tiger riding an elephant appealed to the public and forward-looking circus people. A group of American showmen operated the Carl Hagenbeck Circus in 1905 and 1906. It became the famous Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, which performed from 1907 to 1938. But Hagenbeck was never an owner of this circus. He died on April 14, 1913.
