Eduard Paul Tratz (25 September 1888, in

Salzburg Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian) is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872. The town is on the site of the ...

– 5 January 1977, in Salzburg) was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

Ahnenerbe

Tratz was the founder of Salzburg's ''Haus der Natur'', one of the leading museums of natural history in Austria, in 1924. A member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

, he ensured significant funding for the museum after the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

and spent much of it adding eight new areas dealing with such topics as

eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...

and

racial hygiene The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...

. He played a leading role in helping to popularise " Rassenkunde" in Austria and was also a departmental head in the

Ahnenerbe The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promot ...

(and thus entitled to officer rank in the

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...

).Pringle, ''The Master Plan'', p. 311 In late 1939, Tratz was one of a number of leading scholars chosen by

Wolfram Sievers Wolfram Sievers (10 July 1905 – 2 June 1948) was ''Reichsgeschäftsführer'', or managing director, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935 to 1945. Early life Sievers was born in 1905 in Hildesheim in the Province of Hanover (now in Lower Saxony), the son ...

to be sent to

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

in order to help plunder the country's museums. His main port of call was the State Zoological Museum in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

, where his haul included 147 rare birds, three

wisent The European bison (''Bison bonasus'') or the European wood bison, also known as the wisent ( or ), the zubr (), or sometimes colloquially as the European buffalo, is a European species of bison. It is one of two extant species of bison, along ...

s, two

wildcat The wildcat is a species complex comprising two small wild cat species: the European wildcat (''Felis silvestris'') and the African wildcat (''F. lybica''). The European wildcat inhabits forests in Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus, while the ...

s, a

Nile crocodile The Nile crocodile (''Crocodylus niloticus'') is a large crocodilian native to freshwater habitats in Africa, where it is present in 26 countries. It is widely distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, occurring mostly in the central, eastern ...

, numerous skeletons and prehistoric skeleton parts and twelve rare reference books, all sent to his own museum in Salzburg.

Post-war

After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Tratz was interned for two years before being adjudged a "lesser activist" and then was allowed to return to his role as director of the ''Haus der Natur'' in 1949. Whilst many of the exhibits he had plundered were returned to Warsaw plaster casts of supposed ideal types of Nordic and Jewish "races" remained on display into the 1990s. A bust of Tratz is situated near the museum's entrance.

Bonobo research

Tratz also worked with

Heinz Heck Heinz Heck (22 January 1894 – 5 March 1982) was a German biologist and director of Hellabrunn Zoo (''Tierpark Hellabrunn'') in Munich. He was born in Berlin and died in Munich. With his brother, Lutz Heck, who was director of the Berlin ...

on a comparative study examining

chimpanzee The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...

s and

bonobo The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus '' Pan,'' the other being the comm ...

s, most of the work for which was done during the Second World War at

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

Hellabrunn Zoo Hellabrunn Zoo (or Tierpark Hellabrunn in German) is a 40 hectare (99 acre) zoological garden in the Bavarian capital of Munich. The zoo is situated on the right bank of the river Isar, in the southern part of Munich near the quarter of Thalkirc ...

. The study, which was not published until after the war, noted a list of eight differences between the two species, which at the time were believed to be very closely related or even identical, mainly focusing on the more passive and vocal nature of the bonobo and their preference for human-like face to face sexual intercourse instead of the dog-like copulation utilised by chimpanzees. The research was largely ignored internationally, in part because it was not published in

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

although a general distrust of research findings based on zoo animals also damaged its credibility. However, later research undertaken in the wild largely supported Tratz and Heck's conclusions and the work became recognised as groundbreaking.Frans B. M. Waal, ''Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us About Human Social Evolution'', Harvard University Press, 2002, p. 51

External links

Haus der Natur English language website

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tratz, Eduard Paul 1888 births 1977 deaths 20th-century Austrian zoologists SS officers Scientists from Salzburg Ahnenerbe members