ARTE – SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 14 AT 10:25 PM – DOCUMENTARY
From his capture in the Asian jungle to his killing in a street in Tours in June 1902, poor Fritz, who had asked for nothing, had seen the world, leaving India for Hamburg. He then crossed the Atlantic and traveled the length and breadth of the United States and then Europe. Fritz? That was the name given to this imposing elephant and, if we are to believe his trainer George Clonkin, supremely intelligent. A pachyderm who had spent fifteen years of his life fascinating crowds in one of the largest American circuses after having belonged to the German Carl Hagenbeck (1844-1913), a famous wild animal dealer, who brought him from India to Hamburg before selling him in the United States.
Well constructed, benefiting from rare archives – such as these short films by Lumière or Edison dating from 1896 and 1897 –, press articles, very successful animations and valuable explanations from American, German and French historians (Violette Pouillard, Eric Baratay), specialists in the trade of wild animals and zoos in the West, this documentary is quite moving.
It traces the birth of the globalized exploitation of wild animals at a time when the taste for exoticism, widespread in the West, allows for the worst mistreatment. Through the adventures of the unfortunate Fritz, it is the relationships between humans and wild animals made more or less docile in Western zoos that are drawn.
Execution in Tours
Trained in the menagerie of the immense American circus Barnum alongside hundreds of other wild animals, sometimes brutalized so that he remained as docile as possible, Fritz would participate, from November 1897, in the immense tour (five years!) of the “Greatest Show on Earth”, which, after having delighted the American crowds, set off to conquer Europe. A phenomenal show of three hours and one hundred and fifty numbers, with thousands of animals and more than a thousand accompanying members.
It was after a performance in Tours in June 1902 that Fritz, very agitated on his way back to the station, rebelled in the middle of the street. Panicked, the leaders decided to kill him on the spot. Nooses were tied around his neck as best they could, and a hundred men pulled on the ropes to finish him off.
A postcard taken at the scene of the execution shows the corpse lying on one side, the underside of the legs in very poor condition, surrounded by a curious crowd. The circus management having donated his remains to the city of Tours, the unfortunate Fritz now sits enthroned behind a window in the Museum of Fine Arts. His gaze is one of infinite sadness.
The Tragic Story of Fritz the Elephantdocumentary by Camille Ménager (Fr., 2023, 53 min). Available on demand on Arte.tv until October 14.
