Eduard Paul Tratz (25 September 1888, in

Salzburg Salzburg is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach, Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Alps moun ...

– 5 January 1977, in Salzburg) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

Ahnenerbe

Tratz was the founder of Salzburg's ''Haus der Natur'', one of the leading museums of

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

in Austria, in 1924. A member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

, he ensured significant funding for the museum after the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

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

eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...

and racial hygiene. He played a leading role in helping to popularise " Rassenkunde" in Austria and was also a departmental head in the Ahnenerbe (and thus entitled to officer rank in the

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...

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

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

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

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

, where his haul included 147 rare birds, three

wisent The European bison (: 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 bi ...

s, two wildcats, 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 in sub-Saharan Africa, occurring mostly in the eastern, southern, and ce ...

, 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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

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 on a comparative study examining

chimpanzee The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of Hominidae, great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close rel ...

s and

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

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

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

's Hellabrunn Zoo. 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 that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

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 Austrian eugenicists Austrian Nazis SS officers Scientists from Salzburg Ahnenerbe members People from the Duchy of Salzburg