
Ludwig Georg Heinrich "Lutz" Heck (23 April 1892-6 April 1983) was a German zoologist and Nazi Party member. He served as director of the Berlin Zoo from 1932 to 1945, and, during World War II, he stole the Warsaw Zoo's most valuable animals and took them back to zoos in Nazi Germany. He also failed in his attempt to recreate the extinct auroch bison, a project assigned to him by Hermann Goering.
Biography[]

Heck in 1939
Ludwig Georg Heinrich Heck was born in Berlin, German Empire in 1892, the son of Ludwig Heck, the director of the Berlin Zoo from 1888 to 1931. He studied natural sciences at the University of Berlin and obtained animals for the Berlin Zoo in a 1925 expedition to Ethiopia and a 1935 expedition to Canada. Having become a financial supporter of the SS in 1933, he used his trip to Canada to speak to German expatriates about the benefits of national socialism. He took over the Berlin Zoo in 1932 and became a close associate of Hermann Goering; in 1937, Heck joined the Nazi Party. In 1938, he prohibited Jews from visiting the Berlin Zoo, and he supported the creation of a children's zoo to indoctrinate youths with Nazism. During World War II, Heck pillaged the Warsaw Zoo, stealing the most valuable animals and taking them back to German zoos, in spite of his once-warm relations with Warsaw Zoo zookeeper Jan Żabiński and his wife Antonina Żabińska. After the 1945 Battle of Berlin, he fled with his wife to Bavaria, escaping Soviet prosecution. He died in 1983, and a bust of Heck was placed in the Berlin Zoo a year later; in 2015, responding to a petition to remove Heck's bust due to his association with Nazism, the Zoo added an information tablet on Heck's past, and, in 2016, an exposition about the zoo during the Nazi era was opened in the antelope shelter.