The zoo that made about €5 million (£4.2m) from Knut, the polar bear, has been accused of abandoning his memory by fans aggrieved at the absence of a ceremony to mark the anniversary of his death a year ago.
Followers of Berlin Zoo’s star attraction, who are known as Knutianer, were furious that staff tidied away flowers, messages and croissants (Knut’s favourite treat) almost as soon as they were placed in front of the polar bear enclosure.
The zoo seemed keen to distance itself from the cult of the Knutianer. “You mourn people, not animals,” Bernhard Blaszkiewitz, the zoo’s director, was quoted as saying yesterday in Bild newspaper. “I wish that all this fuss would come to an end.” However, a spokeswoman at the zoo insisted that the fans were welcome even though it had decided to have no formal ceremony or memorial.
Knut, the first polar bear cub to survive at the zoo for 30 years, became an international ursine sensation when he was abandoned by his mother but keepers decided to rear him by hand. His delightful antics with his keeper, Thomas Doerflein, drew in an extra 300,000 visitors in his first year and almost doubled the zoo’s takings through admission fees and souvenirs.
But the fairytale turned sour when Mr Doerflein died of a heart attack in 2008 and Knut became less cute as he grew into an awkward adolescent, shunned by other polar bears. He collapsed from a brain condition and drowned in his pool aged 4.
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“We are angry and sad,” said Karin Gude-Kohl, 68, a Knutianer from Britz in Berlin who added that she had visited the bear almost every day of his life. “I brought flowers but only a short time later they were gone. The zoo does not want us to remember Knut here. But we were the ones who were there every day and helped put millions into the coffers of the zoo.”
Her own poetic tribute placed on a hedge in front of the enclosure, declared: “If the tears of the world were a ladder, they would reach Knut in Heaven.”
Knut’s remains were sent to Berlin’s Natural History Museum for taxidermy but are still in the deep freeze with no date set for a reappearance. A bronze sculpture is planned at the zoo in June providing that sufficient funding can be raised. The spokeswoman could not say when the stuffed remains of Knut, being prepared by a technique known as dermoplastic, would be put on display. “It is for the museum to decide, we only have real animals in the zoo,” she said.
The museum seems in no rush to put the bear on display, although there are plans to include Knut in an exhibition about climate change, probably in 2014.
Nevertheless, the opportunities for Knut-based fundraising continue. The organisation Friends of Tierpark Berlin and Zoo Berlin this month launched its third commemorative medal for the polar bear, called Knut the Dreamer and showing him relaxing on a white rock.