User:Virtualiter/Ludwig Ruhe KG

Ludwig Ruhe, also Louis Ruhe (* 1828 in Grünenplan; † 1888) was an animal dealer and founder of an animal trading dynasty.

Life and work
Ludwig Ruhe was the son of a master tailor. He married Elisabeth Müller, the daughter of a bird dealer, and traveled for his father-in-law's business. In the Weserbergland and Harz mountains, canaries such as the Harzer Roller were bred as a secondary business. Ludwig Ruhe discovered Saint Petersburg as the first export market and, after a 12-day walk, transported 210 birds to the Lübeck port. In 1858 he traveled to Chile and Peru for the first time. He sold the finches and parrots he brought back with him in Marseille and Le Havre.

(The other one, Karl Reiche (1827–1885), also from the glassmaking town of Grünenplan in Hils on the edge of the Weserbergland, also made his first trip as a trader to Saint Petersburg in May 1840 – at just 13 years of age. And the following year, the boy was the first bird trader to dare to make the leap across the Atlantic to the New World. Although the term “leap” is not entirely accurate in this case. “I had to use a sailing ship and it took me months before I arrived in America,” reported Reiche in the book “Gefangen Vögel,” (Captured Birds) published in 1872, a “handbook and textbook for lovers and keepers of native and foreign caged birds” compiled by Alfred Brehm (1829–1884). Firma Reiche, located at 55 Chatham street, in New York. )

In 1860 he began to set up his own business by opening overseas branches. In 1866 he founded a first branch in Lima, Peru, and after a shipwreck in 1867 the second in New Orleans, in 1868 the company Louis Ruhe, Inc. in New York City, 853 Broadway, and in 1870 in London. In 1880 he moved his business from Grünenplan to Alfeld, Am Markt, and from there began trading in exotic animals.

In 1885 he advertises: Bluebirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, black siskins, golden-headed starlings, Baltimore starlings, paperlings, copper finches, cat thrushes, cow starlings, white-eared parakeets, black-tailed grosbeaks, Senegalese doves, beos, red-fronted New Zealand parakeets, zebra finches, etc.

Descendants
Ludwig Ruhe's son Hermann took over the business in Alfeld after his death in 1888, and his son Bernhard took over the business in New York. From 1890, after an agreement with the second Alfeld animal dealer Reiche, they limited themselves to the canary trade for ten years, then resumed trading in exotic animals and set up animal capture and collection stations all over the world. For over eight decades, Ruhe worked closely with the Mysore Zoo in South India.

Hermann built the Villa Ruhe in 1912–14 to accommodate his business partners - maharajahs, zoo and circus directors - in a manner befitting their status. In the 1920s, the Ruhes designed and built important zoos all over the world and offered Völkerschau.

After Hermann Ruhe's death in 1923, his son of the same name took over the company and built it into the largest animal trading company. In the winter of 1925/26, the enterprising director and re-creator of the Hanover Zoological Garden Otto Müller travelled to Abyssinia to recruit a troop of Somalis for the world-famous animal trading company L. Ruhe, Alfeld (Leine), and to study the animal world of the Abyssinian highlands. He reports on this in "Rings um den Tschertscher. Wanderfahrten in Abessinien" (Around the Tschertscher. Hiking trips in Abyssinia). Indies crocodiles left New Orleans on the Steamship "Erfurt" consigned to Bremen where they will be distributed to zoos throughout Germany and Switzerland. The strange collection was purchased by Louis Ruhe of Alfeld, Germany. Richard Müller (1904–1987), the former director of the Wuppertal Zoo, raved about the good old days when every zoo director could "fulfill every wish for his zoo, like a little boy in a toy shop at Christmas." Between 1923 and 1933 alone, thousands of animals came onto the market, Müller recalled in 1963: "230 elephants, 30 hippos, 16 giraffes, 274 zebras, 248 lions, 229 tigers, 305 polar bears and over 2000 alligators, to name just a few of the particularly remarkable species." From 1931 to 1971 Ruhe leased the Hannover Zoo. In 1948 he set up the Ruhr Zoo in Gelsenkirchen. Adolph Krone became managing director in New York. Their animal catcher Phillip Carroll (1904-1974) supported Albert Sabin in the 1950s with polio experiments on chimpanzees.

Her long-time traveler to India Albert Meems came and went in England during the war until he was reported to MI5 in 1944. Ludwig's grandson Heinz Ruhe (+ 20 February 1953 in Freiburg), president of the New York animal importing firm of Louis Ruhe, Inc. died of a heart attack at the age of 45 on the annual collecting trip. In the 1970s, Hermann Jun. († 14 December 2003) promoted the establishment of safari parks.

Lutz Ruhe (1935-2009) was the fourth generation to run the zoo. with his brother Heiner the branch in the USA. In 1962 they founded a company with Louis Goebel that operated Jungleland USA, founded the "Baby Zoo" of the Oakland Zoo in 1965), opened the “Safari World” in Coarsegold, California and in 1973 the children’s zoo in Happy Hollow Park & ​​Zoo in San José (California).

Literature

 * Ina Gravenkamp (museum director): Kanarienvögel und wilde Tiere: Zur Geschichte des Tierhandels in Alfeld. In: Museum der Stadt Alfeld: Sammlung exotischer Tierpräparate. Alfeld: Stadt, 1996, S. 21-34 (betr. u. a. Karl Reiche, gebürtig aus Grünenplan)
 * Hermann Ruhe: Wilde Tiere frei Haus, Copress-Verlag, München 1960
 * Richard Müller: 100 Jahre Tiergroßhandlung L. Ruhe/Alfeld, in: Der Zoologische Garten (NF) Bd. 28, 1963, S. 71 ff.
 * Godehard Wolski (Hrsg.): Alfelds wilde Zeiten: 125 Jahre Alfelder Stadtgeschichte(n), Schaper, Alfeld u.a. 1996, ISBN 3-7944-0182-4
 * Bernd Herrmann, Ulrike Kruse: Schauplätze und Themen der Umweltgeschichte: Umwelthistorische Miszellen aus dem Graduiertenkolleg; Werkstattbericht, Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2010, ISBN 3941875639, S. 216 ff.; Google Books

Trivia
Provenance researcher Charlotte Marlene Hoes from Heidelberg University has just completed her doctorate on the Alfeld animal traders and their trading networks.