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Much Ado About Dogs in Former East Berlin : The Hundemuseum, with its 20,000 dog-related artifacts, testifies to Germany’s love of canines.

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KUEHL is a <i> Denver free-lance writer. </i>

My West Berlin friend was humoring me. Not much of a dog fancier and even less a fan of former East Berlin, he’d agreed to escort me on a visit to a dog museum in the Blankenburg district on the northeastern city limits.

I’d read in the Guinness Book of Records that this was the only dog museum in Germany--a country known for its dedication to pooches. And I was hoping our planned experience would provide a glimpse into the German psyche . . . at least where its preoccupation with dogs was concerned.

It seemed appropriate that such a museum would be in Berlin, where at twilight the main thoroughfare Kurfurstendamm takes on the aura of a classy dog show, with elegant owners walking their pedigreed companions. At sunrise, Berliners and canines meet at the chic Cafe Mohring before wandering over to the Europa Center for a little shopping at the designer boutiques. Person and dog alike are obviously well groomed and well bred.

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Then look eastward, well beyond where the wall divided the city until almost three years ago. Somber Blankenburg with its factory- smoke-darkened brick houses, potholed pavement and peeling paint is a long way (about an hour and $35 by taxi) from the gaiety of the Ku’damm. And you can’t miss the sharp contrast in style, with people in drab sweaters and baggy pants escorted by over-fed mutts with wiggly tails.

When we pulled up in front of the Hundemuseum (“dog museum”), a two-story brick house behind an iron picket fence, we didn’t know what to expect. The listing in Guinness had mentioned seven exhibition halls with 20,000 dog-related artifacts. The place didn’t look big enough--but, then, who defines what is “artifact” and “exhibition hall,” not to mention museum material?

The curator, a silver-haired gentleman, politely greeted us at the door, then launched into an avalanche of rushing German. My friend began translating as I reeled back, overwhelmed by the assault of canine memorabilia. Enormous posters. Hundreds of dog show medals. Display cases of miniatures. Long outdated calendars. Clocks that barked instead of cuckooing. Framed cartoons. Shelves of vases, music boxes, even lamp bases. Plates. Plaques. Playthings. Even a postage stamp.

If it had a dog carved, painted, etched, inked, sewn or inlaid on it, it was probably part in this garden of canine kitsch. My first impulse was to laugh. But the curator was so intense, my friend so focused on translating, that I realized the exhibits were not intended to be taken lightly.

Gradually the translated story took shape. Margareta and Gerhard Laske, professional chow and Pekingese breeders, began collecting canine memorabilia 40 years ago, then opened the museum to the public in 1982. For 24 years the Laskes served as co-organizers of the biggest kennel show in the Soviet states, drawing 40,000 to 50,000 visitors every May to the grounds of industrialist Werner von Siemens’ villa in Brandenburg.

The kennel shows, which drew as many as 25,000 entries, were one of the few major competitions not under government control, the curator said. The accent on improving canine bloodlines was so strong that retirees over 60 were permitted to take winning dogs outside East Germany to compete in international shows. It was during these visits to other countries that requests were made for donations to the planned dog museum in Blankenburg.

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The donations--which ranged from doggy knickknacks to pedigree charts, veterinarian X-rays to yellowing snapshots of smiling families with their pets--were added to the Laskes’ private collection (understandably heavy on chow and Peke material). It was enough to overflow a seven-room house that once served as shelter for farmhands who worked the acreage out back.

A number of the exhibits predated the building of the Wall. Even my non-dog-loving friend was intrigued by the German shepherd’s food-stamp card from 1942. The Third Reich deemed a “useful” dog worthy of the same rations as a soldier.

“You rarely see shepherds in Germany any more,” my friend whispered. “They haven’t been popular since Hitler declared shepherds his favorite dog.” He quietly made note of the fact that there was a lack here also, of photographs of political leaders with their dogs--Hitler with his shepherds, Bismarck with his mastiff and Frederick II with his whippets.

Upstairs, one spiked canine collar hanging on the wall looked to be two feet in diameter. “For a mastiff?” I asked. “No, a bracke ,” a large hunting dog, the curator explained, his hands outlining an animal about the size of a compact car. I wondered aloud if Prussian brackes snacked on dachshunds.

“Dachshunds are strictly Bavarian,” my West Berlin friend explained, sounding a little impatient. “You won’t see many dachshunds in Berlin.”

Maybe not real ones, but the sausage-like motif was recurring here, especially in this museum’s exhibits: running around the bases of music boxes, clowning in comic strips, contorted in art-deco figurines. And, pictured here, what was the symbol of the 1972 Munich Olympics? (Dachshund, of course.) And hey, did you notice the pooch pictured in the museum sign outside? (Hint: It takes a long dog to spell out a name like Hundemuseum.)

Another room was filled with stuffed animals and at least a hundred well-used, dog-shaped toys. Next door we saw stuffed animals, taxidermist style, along with an assortment of canine skulls, jawbones and some garments woven from chow hair.

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And then a surprising horror show: a dozen or so puppy fetuses in formaldehyde. Suddenly I was back in high school biology class, feeling that same shade of green when faced with scientific enlightenment. “That’s to give the breeder an idea of what a deformed puppy will look like when its born,” the curator explained, ignoring my sudden change in color. At least that’s what I thought he said as I hurried on to something less scientific. And there it was--a drinking glass painted with a scene of a sweet little doggie being carried off to heaven by the angels.

As I rushed down the hallway to escape those pickled puppies, my normally restrained West German friend trailed behind, chattering excitedly about having seen a large poster--a vintage Gaines dog food promotion depicting dogdom’s family tree. “I had that one when I was a boy. This size and color but much bigger than the one pictured here. How I loved him. Oh God! What memories!”

On the return trip to my Ku’damm hotel, my friend had returned to his non-dog-loving self and was expounding on the impact of dogs on Berlin. “At least 250,000 dogs are registered in West Berlin, and the East Berliners don’t bother about keeping track of things like that. But no matter which side of the city, every pensioner has his dog.”

To prove his point, he pointed out the taxi window at the intersection ahead, where aging owners and a mixed bag of poodles, hounds, spaniels and terriers waited at the traffic light.

“The only regulation,” he continued, “is that the owner is supposed to carry away his dog’s dirt himself. But that doesn’t work. The police have so much trouble just trying to control Berlin’s traffic mess, how are they going to patrol dog dirt?”

Much ado about, . . . well, you know, but he did have a point. We’d seen canines in restaurants, on trains, in shops, at flea markets and at all the best parties.

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We had seen man’s best friend strolling Museum Island in East Berlin; checking out the action at the Europa Center; sniffing roses in the Baroque Garden at Charlottenburg Palace; snapping up choice bits of sausage at a lakeside pub. We’d even seen a pair of faithful whippets pushing up daisies where Frederick II was supposed to be buried in the cemetery at Sans Souci Park in Potsdam.

What we had not seen was a large vending machine like the model I’d admired in Freiburg, near the French border. It was decked out with a red sign that transcended any language barriers: Hundehaufchen it said (literal translation: “hound heaps”) with a cutout of a northbound dachshund with a Band-Aid across his southern side. Underneath was a cartoon of a puppy on a potty and next to it, a roll of toilet paper. There was a slot to drop in your coin: three disposal bags for less than a dime.

Following our journey to the dog museum, and back in West Berlin, we were getting out of the cab near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church when we heard the blare of a calliope heading our way across the plaza. When we looked up, we saw a Don Quixote type in black boots, black tights, a black Edwardian jacket and a black hat with a flowing white-chiffon scarf. His steed was a three-wheeled bicycle, complete with three waving flags mounted on the trunk in back. What a showman, we said to each other, before noticing that he’d been upstaged by his caboose: a laundry basket on wheels full of yipping, silky puppies thoroughly enjoying their outing.

Man, bike and pups zigzagged off through traffic before I could find my camera. “Probably just another street entertainer,” my friend guessed. “But in Berlin, one never knows.”

GUIDEBOOK

Dog Days

The Hundemuseum: Alt-Blankenburg 33, Blankenburg, a section of Berlin’s Weissensee district; telephone locally 481-39-31. Open Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, 3 to 6 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission: about $1.25. No English spoken.

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