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
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.[n 1] It was named Asra after a particularly talented Great Dane,[1][2]2 who was the mother of five of the six dogs at the school; the other, a terrier, was added later as a rescue.[3] 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.[1]
The dogs were to be trained to talk, count, and reason, and the Schmidts held performances at local venues.
Müller's article stated that
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.
Bondeson ascribed most of the successes to the Clever Hans effect, and said that press coverage had exaggerated what he wrote.[8][14] The Nazis encouraged research in animal psychology and were looking for military applications, "but that's a million miles away from the press claims—which get taller by the day—that the Nazis had a legion of talking, machine-gun-toting hounds, on the point of being unleashed on the allies."[14]
Margarethe Schmidt's nephew and others denied that Hundesprechschule Asra was sponsored by the Nazis, saying that if it had been, she would have been punished after the war.[1][4] The performances were the only source of income for her and her mother, and although there were many committed party members in the town, Schmidt "complained over and over again about chicanery on the part of the authorities."[3] In 1943 she wrote that she was no longer receiving any food for the dogs because she did not pay taxes and was neither breeding her animals nor doing "scientifically notable" training, and at the end of the war she wrote that there was a plan to kill the dogs, resettle her, and seize the house from her mother.[3]
See also
- Talking animal § Dogs (reports about "talking" dogs in other countries)
- Dog communication § Human speech
Notes
References
- ^ a b c d Thomas Spanier, "Hunde-Grete aus Leutenberg macht Karriere in England," Thüringer Allgemeine, May 28, 2011 (in German)
- ^ a b c Amu, Titus (May 25, 2011). "Sitz Heil!". sueddeutsche.de (in German). Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved November 8, 2017.
- ^ a b c d Thomas Spanier, "Die Hundeflüsterer von Leutenberg," Thüringer Allgemeine, June 4, 2011 (in German)
- ^ a b c Thomas Spanier, "Augenzeuge hegt Zweifel an sprechenden Hunden in Leutenberg," Ostthüringer Zeitung, May 31, 2011 (in German)
- ISBN 978-3-86504-258-3, pp. 124–25, pdf pp. 130–31(in German)
- ^ von den Berg, p. 125, pdf p. 131.
- ^ a b c d
ISBN 978-0-8014-5017-4.
- ^ a b c d e "Nazis tried to train dogs to talk, read and spell to win WW2," The Daily Telegraph May 24, 2011
- ^ New York Daily News, May 26, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012.
- ^ a b Simon de Bruxelles, The Times, "Nazis bred 'talking' dogs for war effort," The Australian, May 26, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012.
- Time, May 25, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012.
- ^ Stanley Coren, "The School to Teach Nazi War Dogs to Speak: Hitler wanted dogs that could communicate with their SS masters," Canine Corner, Psychology Today, May 26, 2011.
- ^ Maureen Dowd, "Hitler’s Talking Dogs," The New York Times, July 12, 2011, retrieved February 7, 2012.
- ^ a b "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 News Wales, May 28, 2011.
Sources
- Max Müller. "Über das Sprechen von Tieren in Wortbegriffen des Menschen. Die Leutenberger Tier-Sprechschule ASRA." Tierärztliche Mitteilungen 24.7/8 (1943) 71–72 (in German)