Description

Rare map of the Nuremberg Zoo from the year of its opening at a new location, after being moved from the original location in Luitpoldarena, in ordert to enlarge Nazi party rally grounds.

The Nuremberg Zoo was founded on 11 May 1912at the Luitpoldhain. After the Nazis seized power, the zoo had to give way for the expanding Reichsparteitagsgelände (the Nazi party rally grounds), and was closed in February 1939. In May 1939, the new zoo was opened in the Reichswald at the Schmausenbuck. The Zoo was almost completely demolished after World War II and was rebuilt at the end of the 1950s. Today the Nuremberg Zoo is one of the largest ones in Europe.

Bertl Kuch, born on 11. 11. 1904 in Zweibrücken, was a German female artist and designer. She is probably identical to one Albertine Welscher, schooled as an advertising graphic designer in Nuremberg at the School for Advertising Art in 1924 under Max Körner. In 1924 she won the third price at a competition for best advertising design. She is still mentioned under her maiden name in 1928. After that we can presume she married the artist Jobst Koch and continued working on advertising design in Nurnberg in the 1930s. In those years Bertl Kuch designed maps of Nuremberg for visitors and this map of the Zoo.

Bertl Kuch was also a ceramic designer and a sculptor. Together with her husband she designed religious sculptures in churches before the World War II. Her most famous sculpture is the nativity scene on the Christkindlesmarkt (Christmas market) in Nuremberg from 1935, which survieed the war and is still exhibited today.

We could not trace any other Kuch’s work made after the WWII. She is last mentioned before 1956.

References: AKL Bio-Bibliographischer Index, Bd. 5, 2000, S. 73. Manfred H. Grieb, Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon (München 2007), p.  1650.