Teddy Bear: A strange collection of photos of Germans with huge polar bears

Once, in the 80s, the Frenchman Jean-Marie Donat, who collects works of art, including rare photographs, came across a bizarre photo from Germany. The photo showed a man with someone in a suit of a big polar bear. More than 10 years later, Donat discovered another similar photograph and realized that there must be quite a lot of such shots.

The collector began looking for other photos from this series. Along with this, he tried to find out what kind of mysterious collection, the heroes of which along with the bear were a variety of people - from children to soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Donat was not able to obtain reliable information, although several assumptions of the sudden popularity of this animal did arise. The most logical explanation is that in the 20s of the last century (and it was then these pictures began to appear) two polar bears settled in the Berlin zoo. Everyone, young and old, wanted to take pictures with predators, and young people who wanted to earn extra money quickly caught the crowd’s new enthusiasm and, having obtained the costumes of bears, began to “do business”.

Watch the video: Nora the polar bear cub growing up (May 2024).