"[3] He came to fame with Big Otto's Trained Wild Animals, a circus that exhibited around the Midwest and the east coast of the U.S., including at Eau Claire's Annual Agricultural Street Fair and Carnival in 1904,[4] Chicago's White City Amusement Park in 1906,[5] and Tennessee's Appalachian Exposition in 1910.

[11] According to an interview with William Selig published in 1928, "I chanced to meet Al Ringling on the street; he told me of an itinerant showman named Big Otto, who had a small menagerie in Milwaukee.

"[12] They began making animal films in Chicago,[13] including The Lion Tamer (1909), which may have featured Big Otto in the title role.

[22] In 1918 Breitkreutz was indicted by a grand jury for mail fraud due to his involvement in a shady plan to sell horse meat to the U.S. government to feed prisoners of war.

[25][26] In May 1928, famous film cowboy Tom Mix mentioned Breitkreutz in Photoplay magazine, "Big Otto, I may say, is still a-livin' an' still got an animal show.

His good lookin' daughter is married to a young feller named Furness, one of the owners of the Continental an' a lot of other hotels 'round Los Angeles an' San Francisco.