Conclusion - Nemo & His Relatives Part VIII

Conclusion to the Review of the Otter Exhibition at Wilhelm Fabry Museum 

Respectfully submitted and written by Béatrice Dumiche

The Wilhelm-Fabry-Museum, also responsible for the conservation of the industrial heritage of the town, has been caring for a former local grain alcohol distillery (“Kornbrennerei”) since its opening in 1989 and wondered how to express their explicit support to the exhibition using their own original advertising. It turned into an homage to Nemo with an additional pinch of humor. A beer mat was printed especially for the event using one of his photos taken by “Life on white” as though it had been issued by the historical distillery. It makes a very cute souvenir although one will not be able to find an otter schnapps at Hilden, sadly! The memorabilia most representative of the spirit of the exhibition was a lovely illustration drawn by one of the young visitors, published as a postcard after the exhibit was completed. The leadership’s true continued interest in the subject, shown by this publication is exceptional and cannot be lauded enough. It leads to the question which must occur to the mind of any enchanted visitor, how can this rare collection be preserved and enlarged while keeping the charm and the unique liveliness it owes to Gettmann’s personal involvement and to Nemo’s irreplaceable presence? For both, the Wilhelm-Fabry-Museum seems to have become their second home during the months they spent there together while bringing to life the exhibition, and they made it a great meeting point for all who love otters and otter stories.

They opened the path towards an interactive museum experience based on a personal encounter instead of simply on browsing around pedagogical items in support of a message, which too seldom captures the imagination and which can perhaps even be counterproductive. My opinion is that organizers may even distract from the concrete message of an exhibit by resorting to techniques from virtual media. They may give the impression that the presented items are not interesting enough on their own by adding artificial interest through methods we now know too well are pulling minds away from nature and its immediate experience. The special circumstances under which Gettmann’s Otter exhibition took place, due to the limited budget at his disposal, revealed paradoxically what is lacking at larger structures who pay tribute to delegation and lean management with a reduced presence of qualified educators with the scientific and pedagogic background to provide personally adapted information rather than an impersonal pre-shaped general discourse using fancy tools.

In short: a retired zoo director, member of the IUCN Otter Specialist Group guiding the visitors through the exhibition he conceived, accompanied by Nemo, who is more than just an animal ambassador available for a photograph, cannot be compared with the common museum guide (or worse, an audio-guide transforming the visit into a solipsistic experience under the pretext of an individualised service). It highlighted that nothing can replace personal exchanges and encounters to make natural history museums attractive as places participating in the evolution of science providing a space for self-reflection and playful invention as a response to the challenges of life. It proved that such institutions can be open to everybody if they are conceived twith the goal of inspiring questions and stimulating creativity as they appeal to the human senses and intelligence as power to encourage participation in socialization. Thus, beyond its apparent simplicity and accessibility, Gettmann’s conception revealed an extraordinary ambition, the goal of a fundamentally renovated humanism in which invention cannot be dissociated from first-hand popularization and it is up to specialists, many of whom cut  themselves off from real life to bear their own responsibility in the current rejection of progress. 

These specialists’ retirement from the public discussion as a result of the idea that there could be mass education required to be promoted by all cultural institutions, even those less critically acclaimed with low budgets, revalorizes this kind of unique experience as revolutionary in all meanings of the word. It reminds us that evolution is, contrary to our most reduced materialistic vision, an individual process based on learning from one another through listening and doing, reproducing and inventing. As is it requires personal appropriation, it is, in fact, the harshest criticism against what is currently considered to be culture. It does not recognize “consumption”, which is strictly unnatural and lessens our instincts as predators which has nothing to do with what economists have tried to create. From this point of view, Gettmann showed, through the example of the otter, how absurdly perverted and irrational our discourse has become again using new reasons and excuses sciences contributed to building up while losing contact with the public as well as with their objective. Abandoning their responsibilities in favor of the mainstream economy promising wealth as progress rather than socially useful knowledge benefitting the greater population.   

With the way Gettmann conceived his exhibition, he advocated fundamentally that, against the current climate of disinformation, it was necessary to reactivate the bond between humanities and natural sciences inherited from the Renaissance, the key element of the German “Bildung” in the 18th century. His presentation was an homage to this state of mind which promoted a culture based on intelligent self-fulfilment respecting the nature of the individual for a better socialization and encouraged experimental knowledge. He made it clear that to counterbalance the consumption of virtual information, which frequently people do not take personal responsibility for, it is indispensable to transform museums from institutions simply storing a historic heritage into meeting places where their collections are presented in a way that relates their knowledge to the future as a safeguard and a reference for constructive life projects. A place where people can get more than unconsidered and unsourced facts, and exercise their critical judgment in exchanges adapted to their level of cognition and interest rather than simply being witness to journalistic discussions which rarely contribute to clarify contradictions. They must reach everyone; personally teaching them again that the confrontation with nature means an encounter with the complexity of diversity that mass education and infotainment have not prepared them to live with. The density of his presentation, which was reinforced by the limited space at his disposal, offered the visitor exactly this kind of challenge. It invited him to be curious and inquisitive like an otter, playfully driven by the pleasure to learn more by himself and return to places he loves in order to become more familiar with them. A great merit of Gettmann’s exhibition was that it allowed one to gain knowledge about otters a lively place as it solicited impulsive reactions and reflections when faced with the exhibits and made one choose the most convenient approach for oneself, whether it be to go further into the subject or to just enjoy an informative afternoon which may or may not have an unexpected effect later. 

As he presented exhibits he related to while remaining within the frame of scientific structures, he succeeded in fighting indifference and avoiding the dangers of insignificant accumulation of information while still appealing to the intelligence in which he trusts as both a zoologist and a humanist. He remembered that natural history museums exist to spread awareness and be an independent forum for scientists and multidisciplinary exchanges with an interested audience. In fact, through his exhibit he cautiously modernized their encyclopedic design, not much evolved since the 19th century, according to us, by introducing the principle of pleasure as the most important natural motivation alongside survival instinct. While confronting an exhibit’s objective conservative function with the unpredictable spontaneity of life represented by individuals that only fine arts and literature can portray, he transformed the visit into an encounter and created a way to relate oneself emotionally with the exhibits and to be included in a learning process about the species. He gambled on the curiosity they would incite and the need for structured and safe information in order to provide understanding of the particular character as part of an evolving system with its own complex history where natural and cultural sciences cross without being able to elucidate the mystery of the individuality. This mystery is handled by the arts; they create the attraction of the otherness, often a strong motivation for a personal interest in wildlife and nature. This approach attempted to surmount the artificial opposition between sciences and humanities built up by the positivism and considered as a determining factor of progress. Through this he highlighted that, in the interest of evolution expressing the dynamism of life in dialogue overcoming its own oppositions, it is necessary to train the cooperation of all human faculties in the disciplines they stand for and to conceive educative projects from this larger perspective.

So, Gettmann’s originality, which was revealed more and more as one followed his own itinerary through the exhibition, is that he argues for an interactive structure between zoos and museums at a larger scale and on the basis of a more explicitly coordinated thematic conception than as occasionally happens with, for instance, art exhibitions at zoos. He takes the side for a biodiversity reflected by artifacts illustrating the faculties men and animals have in common as they feature life in different forms and appearances. While proving that every place and every natural manifestation can become an object of observation and provoke reactions, he insists that there must be proper events to raise awareness and locations, such as sanctuaries, dedicated to this purpose where human conscience, rising from solidly established scientific information, can be turned into the resolution to act reasonably in favour of wildlife conservation. This multidisciplinary interactivity, the idea and modalities of which must be built and improved upon as in a laboratory where life as a whole is viewed through different lenses, is a necessary guaranty against a backslide into a romanticism replacing the sensible understanding of nature with the feeling of an undefined communion with it, primarily based on the individual desire of any human person to fuse with an illusionary sense of wholeness to overcome his own existential solitude. At this level, the concept of the exhibition is remarkable again as it featured species who live in large family groups or alone and made it clear that knowing about nature is also learning about social organization and its variable forms. It showed that it is a fundamental step towards civilization because it consists of finding out about specific ways of life according to different existential conditions, which is the motor of evolution working with and for adaptation and invention, helping dreams to become creations.       

Creating a synergy between natural history museums and zoos 

The example of the otter allows Wolfgang Gettmann to transmit the philosophy of a zoo professional with a long personal experience with animals who wants to advocate their case more globally as they participate in the eco-system everyone is responsible for at their own level. Over the years he has become aware that the established role of natural sciences and in turn zoos, as their lively institutional relayers of information, have more and more been contested while the welfare they provided to animals did not stop increasing. He demonstrates that new ways of mediation are indispensable to convince a public often lacking a basis of scientific knowledge and reveals an inability to make up their mind in debates either at the superficial level of disinformation between highly specialized experts. So, although he settled in a museum, his goal was and is to be an advocate for zoos as necessary complements to museums and as a prolongation of school education because without them wildlife will be reduced to an abstraction, the existence of which will paradoxically only be publically noticed for a moment when the news turns to hunting and poaching in far countries where they are supposed to represent a sort of “normality” our civilization likes to feel helpless against. 

In defending the synergy between zoos and museums through the concept of his exhibition, he found a way to fight ignorance practically and without spectacle, showing that the fight for animal conservation cannot be improvised. He highlighted that it requires historical distance and a global scientific culture to allow for evaluation of reasonable and defendable actions according to the present state of knowledge. His success was that it never abandoned the perspective of science and limits to epistemology. He hinted at the necessity of extending the field of zoology, as has already partially happened with it now including the prevention of wildlife damages alongside fish and game management, requiring political support to provide the indispensable legal frame. His pragmatism, based on a large professional competence revealing his comprehension of multiple, sometimes invisible, aspects of the discipline, warned against any misplaced anthropocentrism which would annihilate the exhibit’s educative credibility. He showed that the lack of scientific knowledge and of its critical integration into a context including the evaluation of its own limits leads to irrational and contradictory discourses which do not serve animal welfare in any way, instead encouraging inane fantasy either in the contemporary form of idealization imagining them as better than humans or in the historic demonization as the wild beast. Both are symptomatic of the divorce between reason and emotion which has led to sterile conflicts since they oppose science and feelings and thus humanity with itself, seeming unable to accept our own rationality as part of our evolution and as the dialogue with the animals subsisting in each of us. Abstract concepts are set on one side and subjective emotions on the other which, if they are not mediated, set free an irrational power, unconsciously perpetuating the contradictions aroused by the coexistence of humans and major predators who share not only the same living and hunting grounds but the same playful intelligence. Fables have best featured this ambivalence through the ages, underlining that the characteristics in the animal cursed as evil cunningness is nothing other than the reverse of human cleverness. The otter is the perfect example of this and the meaning of the exhibition’s title was revealed in all its subtlety to those who were attentive throughout their visit and noticed the contradictions within themselves which they were invited to become aware of before taking sides in a complex debate in which arguments based solely on morality are inappropriate.

Gettmann demonstrated that to learn about an animal is to learn about oneself while experiencing the fascination and the irritation of otherness. Thus it is an important stage in psychological development to refine instincts in order to transform them into empathy and understanding while generating the confidence for personal evolution. As the otter, fortunately, inhabits most of the continents, the only exceptions being Oceania and the Antarctic, it is particularly able to illustrate this idea. The variety of places and environmental situations it is present and engaged in encourages awareness and reciprocal support through larger conservation programs, offering the opportunity for comparison. They offer the chance for cultural reflection and exchanges which opens minds to invention because conservation in situ needs local acceptance and a pedagogy respecting the experience and the beliefs of others as they are part of the history which forged their identity. Science will not be able to prevail if it does not adapt and recognize that it requires the mediation of individuals ready to explain its aims and take responsibility for the activities related to it while proposing pragmatic solutions to adults and offering concrete experiences to children. He stressed that meeting animals is fundamental to fighting prejudices, that it must happen early in a child’s life and be initiated by an adult making an educative moment of the encounter with its most prominent conclusion being a sense of self-awareness and the consciousness of personal limits as a sign of human intelligence acquired through evolution. So, he made it clear that the conservation of predators, which no longer challenge our survival instinct through direct confrontation, continues to challenge our existence because they question our natural capacity to evolve according to the survival instinct we share with them. The motto ‘Think globally, act locally’ perfectly matches otter conservation, that is the natural conclusion after visiting Gettmann’s exhibition, which literally invites you to become creative at your turn in favor of otters. 

Gettmann’s personal collection is focussed on the European continent, mostly Germany and the United Kingdom, though his collection from France and the Netherlands was under-represented as he could present only a small part of it. However, he was able to borrow items from other regions for several exhibits, for example, some from Japan, which hints at the ways in which his design could be extended to what could become the world’s first Otter Museum in collaboration with a zoo and animal ambassadors. There is no doubt that this initial exhibition will remain unique because it was an incredible personal realization and the duo of Wolfgang Gettmann and Nemo pushed the limits of any other kind of show as they are a duo in real life. Nevertheless, creating such a place, which does not currently exist even in planning stages anywhere else, through a foundation and/or participative financing while including already existing public structures would be, according to us, the next logical step. It would also be a way to continue to use Nemo’s well-deserved popularity to give otter awareness a lively home after his long association with Düsseldorf and the Aquazoo. It would keep a continuity to the effort, worth being preserved, of Wolfgang Gettmann’s personal involvement. The exhibition highlighted the visionary appropriateness of this by bringing attention to the important cultural heritage of the otters’ presence in North-Rhine-Westphalia which could help its return supported by a very dense network of zoos presenting Eurasian, giant and short-clawed otters in close proximity to each other. This would help give the species’ conservation efforts a dynamic based on original educative choices corresponding to the French initiative of the Plan Loutre, with which it could develop complementary strategies. This would set standards at the European level creating an excellence domain for French and German cooperation in associating natural sciences and humanities according to the tradition of Enlightenment. The institutions which played a decisive role in the rescue of the otter in Europe after the signature of the Bern Convention are all around 40 years old now and it may be an opportunity for the 50th anniversary to add centres documenting that the work is far from completed although it is entering a new phase with the otters’ slow and, in certain places, still threatened return. It is not mentioned often enough but, according to us, the actions in favor of otters, despite the many obstacles they have had to and continue to overcome, have generated the first timid success in reintroducing a predator at the brink of extinction in Europe. This needs to be celebrated with a future-oriented concept helping to normalize the coexistence between them and the other populations in their environments through the consolidation and amelioration of the standards already reached and through the refinement of the pedagogic strategies to make them more concrete. The implementation of such a centre in North-Rhine-Westphalia at the crossing of the borders of the countries initially involved in the process would make sense both historically and geographically while, at a larger scale, due to Germany’s location in Central Europe, it could represent an outreach to the East-European countries where the otter is present thanks to initiatives like the Vydra park in Hungary. Moreover, its realization could be a driving force toward conceiving the comeback of other European predators, for example, wolves, bears or the lynx, as part of a global project, which would succeed with the invention of proper strategies and realistic targets.  

The success of the multidisciplinary conferences, which took place throughout the otter exhibition’s run, showed that there was a real public interest in quality popularization able to relate information to local contexts and to open their minds while telling the stories of remarkable personalities who have contributed to a better knowledge about otters. Two of the conferences directly expanded upon themes evoked through items in the show. The first was the representation of otters in the arts ‘as predators and preys’ by Dr. Sandra Abend, an art historian attached to the Fabry-Museum, who focussed on the predominance of hunting motifs people still have in mind rather than the works concentrating on the animal itself. The depiction of the latter appear to be more significant of the artists’ formal style than in allowing the emergence of new general codes, which is the trend of modern and contemporary wildlife pictures, of which those of the otter are not an exception. The second was dedicated to one of Gettmann’s “heroes”, Gavin Maxwell, whose path he followed to Scotland in an adventurous journey which could not help but remind him of his own experience with Nemo despite the time gap. He brought with him some first-hand information thanks to his personal encounters and the documents he got access to at the Bright Water Visitor Centre on the Isle of Skye. More than one hundred people attended this conference, underlining the particular attraction of subjects associating personal adventures with animal stories. It was up to Dr. Jan Ole Kriegs from the Westphalian Natural History Museum in Münster to raise the awareness that the otter adventure is just at their doorstep now, he gave clues that it has begun to return to some spots in North-Rhine Westphalia, which gives hope it could make it definitively a home again soon.

Pleading the case for an international otter museum and awareness center 

The idea for an “otter awareness center” occurred to me alone and was not suggested by anybody for whom I may be considered a spokesman. It became clear the more familiar I became with the exhibit and observed Wolfgang Gettmann at work during his guided tours. I have no professional background in natural sciences or in zoology, which enables me only to propose such a project officially from this point of view. However, as a renowned specialist of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, working on his very modern concept of nature based on the reinterpretation of antique philosophy through experimental sciences and uncovering its still mostly ignored repercussion on his literature, I esteem myself qualified, being a French professor of German studies of the 18th century, to highlight the importance of such an institution for the re-popularization of humanities which has been a goal of the German Federal Ministers for Culture for years and which, so far as I am aware, has not led to the expected success. This is likely because there have never been targeted test-projects in domains where the cooperation with natural sciences would make a concrete tangible sense. As this article may have already shown, before I fell in love with otters and learned of them as an autodidact and coming into educative contact with zoo keepers, I was already interested in the influences between literature and fine arts in general. Through this, had developed a conscience for the role ‘nature’ had begun to play in the development of a local regional identity around 1930 before the Nazis abused it and the ongoing difficulty of integrating it in a modern ecological approach taking into account this former tradition. So, I want to stress that even away from the humanities, the literature and arts, there is a proper reason for Germany to place the imagery of the otter into a larger cultural context, especially since it was the same publisher who was in charge of both ‘Patschel’ books, so different from one another. My self-promotion, which may seem misplaced at the first glance, has no other goal than to give my proposal the necessary credibility in the context of a scientific evaluation: it is not born out of the blue, it is founded on cultural history and we contend it would participate in its evolution.      

It is my opinion that, with this exhibition, Gettmann perfectly put into practice the initial concept of the Aquazoo, to ally the goals of a museum and a zoo, and expand its perspective with the addition of the dimension of cultural history, which is the domain of the Wilhelm-Fabry Museum. The meeting with the living tame animal played a determining role in this process as it invited the visitor to become involved and take a position. He will be able to relate the knowledge gained through the exhibits to a practical sensorial and affective experience which may both echo and confirm each other, and lead to new questions. This way of thinking will help transform scientific discussions into a more widespread dialogue uncovering that animals are not only a part of a natural organization but also of human culture and that there are interferences between both which are necessary to consciously explore because we have come to a point where we know that sciences and technologies are included in a system of values for which we have responsibility. The way we define ourselves towards nature is the expression of our personal freedom and intelligence as a test for our capacity to evolve. 

These conclusions developed throughout the visit without any moral injunction, they came up spontaneously while spending a moment with otters through the works of those who love and protect them and contribute to readjust their image without negating that they are predators. Sadly, it also awakened the understanding that, although these animals have been hunted for centuries, they are in a privileged situation in Europe where the means for their conservation (scientifically and financially) exist, even if politicians sometimes need to be reminded of their duty to bring the Bern Convention to life by supporting concrete actions.   

It would be a pity ‒ I would even say, a shame ‒ if Gettmann’s initiative, which until now has existed only due to his private dedication (and his faculty to motivate Nemo) did not lead to further institutionalization as it was a real innovation and proven success. His collection needs a place where it can be conserved and inventoried and where it could be developed under good conditions to form the fundament of an educative exhibition through which it would be possible to tackle a wider variety of otter species and launch targeted awareness through multidisciplinary events. This may sound utopic in a period of economic crisis where cultural projects are often treated with despise while the devastating effects of deculturation and desocialization have been routinely deplored by the same people who built up the hurdles for their realization. With his exhibition Gettmann bet on what many would have considered “mission impossible” and proved that where there was a will, there was a way. Although creating a lasting structure is more complex than a single exhibit, it would be a sign that a more advanced stage of otter conservation could be reached and not judged as less important than the management of the animal’s comeback alone. Gettmann’s personal international reputation as a zoologist and otter specialist, and Nemo’s popularity should be able to unite otter lovers and conservationists from all over the world on a unique project proposing an educative program exploiting the possibilities of using present pedagogy to overcome the gap created by positivism and the industrial revolution between sciences and humanities, the origin of many of our psychological and environmental issues. Its strong scientific zoological foundation would be a guarantee for its sustainability and avoid the spiral of a quest for innovation, too often motivated by sensational entertainment to permanently increase visitor statistics. It would be an encitement to experience our relation to nature and the questions it brings, and would be a way to give an insight to the professional applications it offers while perhaps hinting at the modification of our conception of knowledge, which had become very monolithic.

All thirteen otter species are key, playing an essential role in the preservation of their respective eco-systems. There cannot be a more efficient method of promoting environmental education than placing them at the center of a multidisciplinary project which applies new strategies using the benefits of our encyclopedic culture, associated knowledge, and tolerance through the discovery of otherness as an indication of evolutionary intelligence. Such an ambitious realization requires a great deal of preparative work and the question of its feasibility will probably be the hardest hurdle to overcome but it would be an impetus if the first signs of movement towards this project could be given during the Year of Otter. A relatively easy – but work intensive ‒ step would be to create, at least on internet, a catalog of the exhibition with an inventory of a small part of Wolfgang Gettmann’s private collection and to add to this publication the transcriptions of the three major conferences. This would serve as a general introduction to help a larger number of the public consider the ways in which a cooperative centre could work institutionally and who might contribute to its further development financially, with loaned items, or even with suggestions of topics for publication that might be a useful way to begin conceiving a possible future. 

Otter News would like to sincerely thank Clare Laughran for her editing of the review.