Hundesprechschule Asra

The Hundesprechschule Asra or Tiersprechschule Asra (Asra talking school for dogs, Asra talking school for animals) was an institution for performing dogs that existed in Leutenberg, Thuringia, Germany, from 1930 until near the end of World War II. Its Nazi talking dogs became a popular topic in the English-speaking press in 2011, when Jan Bondeson's ''Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities'' used it as an example of Nazi-sponsored animal research.

History

The Hundesprechschule Asra was founded in 1930 by Margarethe Schmidt in Villa Viola, the house on the edge of the town of Leutenberg that she shared with her mother.Bondeson, von den Berg, and English-language newspapers spell her name "Schmitt." Many newspapers wrongly locate the school near Hanover. It was named Asra after a particularly talented Great Dane,Thomas Spanier
"Hunde-Grete aus Leutenberg macht Karriere in England,"
''Thüringer Allgemeine'', May 28, 2011 ² who was the mother of five of the six dogs at the school; the other, a terrier, was added later as a rescue.Thomas Spanier
"Die Hundeflüsterer von Leutenberg,"
''Thüringer Allgemeine'', June 4, 2011 Near the end of the war, in 1945, the villa was occupied by increasingly large numbers of refugees and Margarethe Schmidt closed the school and moved to West Berlin.

The dogs were to be trained to talk, count, and reason, and the Schmidts held performances at local venues.Thomas Spanier
"Augenzeuge hegt Zweifel an sprechenden Hunden in Leutenberg,"
''Ostthüringer Zeitung'', May 31, 2011 A child evacuee described such a performance in 1944, saying that the dogs could tell the time, describe people, and correct misspellings. Max Müller, a veterinarian at the University of Munich,² visited the school in 1942, at which time there was also a cat. The dogs could speak some words but were limited by the structure of their vocal apparatus; they responded more fluently using a code of a number of barks (or rings of an electric bell in the case of the terrier) for each letter. However, the training was only a show; the dogs' utterances were largely incomprehensible and their counting was a trained response. Another person who had attended a performance compared it to the circus, and recalled that the dogs did not speak, supposedly because it was too cold.

Müller's article stated that Hitler had accepted Schmidt's offer for her dogs to perform for members of the Wehrmacht under the auspices of the Strength Through Joy program, but it is unknown whether this happened before the end of the war. There had been work in Germany on teaching dogs to reason and communicate throughout the nineteenth century, and beginning in 1910 a German pointer named Don became famous for being able to say that he was hungry and ask for cakes.
^56–64"Nazis tried to train dogs to talk, read and spell to win WW2,"
''The Daily Telegraph'' May 24, 2011Michael Sheridan
"Adolf Hitler's Nazi scientists sought to teach dogs to talk, read, write: book,"
''New York Daily News'', May 26, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012. The "new animal psychology" (german: neue Tierpsychologie) had been developed by Karl Krall and others to characterize the reasoning abilities of animals, particularly canine philosophers such as the Airedale terrier Rolf, and had many adherents in Germany in the 1920s.^35–53 Experiments in human-canine telepathy were conducted.^46–47Simon de Bruxelles, ''The Times''
"Nazis bred 'talking' dogs for war effort,"
''The Australian'', May 26, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012.

Jan Bondeson's ''Amazing Dogs''

In 2011, Jan Bondeson mentioned the Hundesprechschule Asra in his ''Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities'' as an example of Nazi experiments in animal-human communication.⁵⁰ He told an interviewer, "Hitler was himself interested in the prospect of using educated dogs in the war effort, and he advised representatives of the German army to study their usefulness in the field." Many newspapers reported the school as a project to aid the war effort by training dogs to work as concentration camp guards, or in surveillance, and that promising dogs were recruited for it. Maureen Dowd wrote in an op-ed piece in ''The New York Times'' about strange Nazi plans that " hestory set off a panting spate of 'Heel Hitler,' 'Furred Reich,' 'Wooffan SS' and 'Arf Wiedersehen' headlines in British tabloids and plenty of claims that Hitler was 'barking mad.'"Maureen Dowd
"Hitler’s Talking Dogs,"
''The New York Times'', July 12, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012. Bondeson told the German ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' that Hitler had ordered the SS to investigate the possible military utility of the training, and the newspaper labeled a picture of a Munich telepathy experiment from the book as having been taken at Asra.¹

Bondeson ascribed most of the successes to the Clever Hans effect, and said that press coverage had exaggerated what he wrote."Author Jan Bondeson frowns on 'Nazi Superdog' claims: An academic believes "Nazi superdog" press coverage has trivialised his study of the history of the partnership between man and his canine best friend,"
BBC
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