Pallenberg Wonder Bears – From the Beginning

By Peggy Adler and Dibirma Jean Burnham

"Pallenberg Wonder Bears – From the Beginning is a captivating narrative you couldn't have dreamed up, but won't want to put down. I've been in publishing for a long time and at this point it takes something really unique to raise my eyebrows -- and this story certainly did, from the very first page."
-- Justin Race, Director
Purdue University Press

"The rich history of Pallenberg's Wonder Bears has been brought to life through the meticulous research of Peggy Adler and Dibirma Jean Burnham. They weave together the fascinating story of the world's most famous bear act through newly revealed documents and rare  photographs that transport the reader back to an era when audiences marveled at Emil Pallenberg's skillful training and embraced the performances of his amazing bears."
-- Chris Berry
Circus Historian

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215984789

Book preview

Wonder Bears – From the Beginning

Josef, Emil and Christian Pallenberg were brothers from Cologne, Germany who came from a well-known, artistic family. They were the nephews of Johann Heinrich Pallenberg, an artist, carpenter and furniture manufacturer and supplier to the royal Prussian court – and three of the six children of Maria Pallenberg and her husband, Johann, an interior decorator and gilder, who worked on the Eiffel Tower.

Josef, the eldest of Maria and Johann Pallenberg’s children, was extremely interested in animals from an early age. Following a visit to the Cologne zoo, when he was six, Josef was inspired to begin drawing animals and shortly thereafter, attempted to make models of them as well. He experimented at reconstructing the skeletons of dead animals, which he first boiled in his mother’s saucepans. These experiments were the predecessor of a studio that would become filled with skeletons and castings from nature. In 1899, when he was seventeen, Josef enrolled at the Academy of Fine Art in Düsseldorf, where he first studied drawing, but soon switched to the sculpture class of Karl Janssen. In 1902, while still a student, his sculpture, ‘Boar hunt’ brought him critical acclaim when it was recommended for a gold medal at the Great Industrial Trade Fair in Düsseldorf.

Thereafter, Josef left Düsseldorf ’s Academy of Fine Art for the Berlin Zoological Garden, where he’d found a supporter and sponsor in Ludwig Heck, a German zoologist who served as the zoo’s director -- and had previously worked at the zoo in Josef ’s hometown of Cologne. During this period, Josef created a large number of impressive animal sculptures, which brought him to the attention of Carl Hagenbeck, a German merchant who supplied wild animals to many European zoos, as well as to P. T. Barnum. In 1906, Hagenbeck, founder of Tierpark Hagenbeck, a privately owned zoo in Hamburg, Germany, commissioned Josef to produce bronze animals for that zoo’s entrance gate – and along with Josef, created the modern zoo, with animal enclosures without bars. After Josef designed the entrance gate in Hamburg, Hagenbeck commissioned him to create life-sized sculptures of dinosaurs. With the help of his brothers Emil and Christian, he cast several enormous beasts in concrete, forming a park of prehistoric animals.

Over the years that followed, Josef Pallenberg traveled worldwide. In the United States, he studied the animals at the zoos in Cincinnati and Detroit. And in the 1930s, he designed the exterior of the giraffe and hippopotamus houses at Detroit’s zoo, which in fact, was the first Zoological Society in the United States to make extensive use of bar-less exhibits.

But the Wonder Bear story began years earlier. Teenage Emil, and his brother Christian, used to hang out at their older brother Josef ’s studio at the Cologne Zoological Garden. At the time, Josef owned lions, leopards, pumas and bears and suggested to his brothers that they should go ahead and see what they could do in training these animals to do stunts not done before. But according to Emil, it was not long before we discovered that an act of this kind was too costly and would not be profitable.

Thus, they changed to a less costly act, which included three bears, one wild llama, baboons and two dogs. Their first booking was to be in Nance, France, but when they got to the border found they could not enter France with the wild llama on account of the hoof and mouth disease. So they started the engagement without the llama and found that their salary, which was already very little, was cut in half on account the wild llama was missing from the act.

After that engagement, Emil and Christian returned to Cologne and Josef ’s studio at the zoo, in order to learn more about animals and their attributes and to rebuild their act. In the meantime, Josef had concluded from his study of various animals’ anatomy, that it would be possible to train a bear to ride a bicycle. Thus, Emil and Christian’s new act had only two bears - Ella and Tona. The act was billed as Pallenberg Bears and as such, they were the first to show a bear riding a bicycle during an engagement in Altona, Germany.

Emil and Christian had bought Ella, and then, Tona, as cubs and they were so small when purchased, that they each arrived at Cologne in something similar to a bird cage. The Pallenberg brothers housed Ella and Tona at the Cologne Zoo where, in fact, by 1908, Ella was trained to ride a custom made bicycle.

Josef by now was on his way to becoming a renowned sculptor. And, in fact, a few years after his brothers acquired the cubs, moved his sculpture studio from Cologne to Düsseldorf - Lohausen, where he created a sanctuary for himself and his exotic animals. His workshop there was combined with the elements of a natural history museum, surrounded by a small zoological garden. And a showroom and cabinets for various animal skeletons, preserved specimens and natural casts were installed indoors.

During 1909 and 1910, Emil and Christian could not do much with their act. Just little jobs and practice, because Emil had to serve his time in the army. Luckily for him, the first year he was stationed at Cologne and had plenty of time with the animals, though the second year, he was in Berlin. Afterwards (they) had a good many engagements, which took them to France, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Poland and elsewhere. 1913 rolled around and they were back in Holland with a circus and during that engagement, Christian felt he could do better in his original profession as an engineer. Before he departed, Christian and his brother spoke with the circus’ management, who agreed to Emil’ having a new assistant. But the agreement was verbal. Not in writing. Thus, in the program that night, his act was listed in big letters" as Emil & Christian Pallenberg. Two days later, the circus left town without Emil, for the management had confiscated his animals claiming breach of contract. And so he had to stay in Holland. For months Emil and the circus’ management could not come to an agreement, for they were not interested in the money, which was very high, but, in fact, wanted his animals. Finally, in August 1913, Robert Wilschke, an internationally known booker of circus and vaude acts in Germany, who was a representative of the Paul Schultze Agency of Berlin, bailed him out and Emil and his bears were reunited and free to leave the country.

While in Holland in 1913, Emil met 21 year old Catharina Wilhelmina Theresia Wouts Suverein, aka Cato, who managed a small inn with her husband, Leonardus Suverein. And when Emil and his bears were finally able to leave that country for an engagement in Russia, Catharina, went with him, leaving behind her husband and two year old son. Once in Russia, Catharina assisted Emil with his bear act. And though it’s been reported that they were married in St. Petersburg that year, they were, in fact, eventually wed in New York City on November 9, 1915.

In early 1914, Emil had an offer from Martin Beck, who was a vaudeville theatre owner and manager, as well as a theatrical booking agent, to sign for his Orpheum Circuit in the United States. But before Emil signed Beck’s contract, he received an offer to stay in Russia for another six months. And so he and Cato tossed a coin, whether to stay in Russia or go to the U.S.A.

Emil and Catharina arrived at Ellis Island in May of 1914 with Ella, Tona and now a third bear, Sasha, in order to perform for six months in vaudeville, on the Orpheum Circuit. The Palace Theater in Chicago was the first stop on the tour. Two months later, the First World War broke out and as a result, they decided to stay in the United States indefinitely. For Emil was a reservist in the German army and had they returned, he’d have been conscripted.

While on the vaudeville circuit, March 9, 1915 brought Emil, Catharina, now known as Catherine, and their bears to the Hartford Theater, in Hartford, Connecticut. Their act, and in particular, Ella, received rave reviews, for the headline in The Hartford Daily Courant read, Bear Rides Bicycle on Hartford Stage - Clever Trained Animals Head Excellent Program. The article went on to say that one of the other bears in the act roller skated with ease and the entire trio did all kinds of acrobatic stunts. It was to be their last booking on the Orpheum Circuit, as the previous month, John Ringling had hired them for his Barnum & Bailey, Greatest Show on Earth. And thus, on or about March 20, 1915, the Pallenberg Wonder Bears began their nearly fifteen consecutive years as headliners with Ringling Brothers’ owned circuses, which at the time, were headquartered in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Once with the circus, Emil and Catherine added more bears to their act and within a few years they had close to a dozen and so they added handlers to their troupe as well. Each bear was female, adopted as a cub and bottle fed by Catherine, but Emil was their sole trainer. And as with Ella and Tona, training did not start until they were anywhere from one year to eighteen months old, as he felt it unwise to begin before a cub’s brain and physical strength had matured. There was even a period of time when the Pallenbergs and their bears had four different acts performing in the circus’ three rings – including one ring where a bear rowed a boat in which Catherine