"Not today nor tomorrow, but within three, four generations,
people may be glad that we were concerned about the animals
of Africa in our days."
(Bernhard Grzimek, Serengeti shall not die, 1959)
At the beginning of the 1950s, with Germany rebuilding after the war, Bernhard Grzimek headed for Africa. He was looking for animals to repopulate his badly damaged zoo in Frankfurt. He also wanted to study and film the lives of wild animals in their natural habitats in order to improve their conditions in captivity.
These activities were the beginning of a truly unique commitment to protecting wildlife in Africa. With the animal censuses they conducted by plane, Bernhard and his son Michael laid the groundwork for modern nature conservation work at Serengeti National Park and for Frankfurt Zoological Society's global nature conservation programme. Bernhard Grzimek served as the Society's president for over forty years until his death in 1987.
