Ludwig Heck

Ludwig Franz Friedrich Georg Heck (11 August 1860 – 17 July 1951) was a German zoologist who served as the director of Berlin Zoo from 1888 to 1931.

Heck was a national socialist and on his 80th birthday he was personally awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science by Adolf Hitler.

He maintained ties to many of the zoologists and scientists of the period including Hermann Klaatsch, Alfred Nehring, Bernhard Altum, Otto Kleinschmidt, Wilhelm Bölsche and his own colleagues Oskar Heinroth and Max Hilzheimer.

Heck was during his time as director of the Berlin zoo responsible for its survival although he resisted moving to the Carl Hagenbeck model of avoiding cages and using moats.

In a 1938 article on man and nature he wrote about "our upheaval and then rebirth, our exceptional Führer and his hardly less exceptional assistants have lifted a real weight from my shoulders, in that they have organized our state— the first in the world!— on the basis of the natural sciences, on the basis of blood and soil” and he noted further that his sons looked upon him as a "National Socialist" even before the word had been invented.