Tierpark Berlin

This guide to Tierpark Berlin follows preservationist Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who talked East German officials out of demolishing a bombed-out aristocratic palace on this site after World War Two. You'll hear how that rescued building became the seed for East Germany's own zoo, opened in 1955 and built almost entirely by unpaid volunteer labor. Listen for how a shortage of metal shaped the way the animals here are kept to this day.