Hugo Schmitt

Jenny Schmitt suffered a stroke in 1994, and died in 1999.

Hugo Schmitt died of cancer in Sarasota in 1977, shortly after his retirement in Fruitville, Florida, while Axel Gautier was attacked by the elephant Reeba in 1989, and died at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Florida.

After Hugo Schmitt retired from touring on the road in 1971, he was replaced as Ringling's elephant superintendent by his former assistant Axel Gautier, who was in charge of the Blue Unit's elephant herd through 1989, while Schmitt was sent to England to fetch a group of baby elephants from Billy Smart's Circus, which he later trained in Ringling's quarters in Venice, Florida. One of the elephants from this group, Gildah, was later sold to German-American magicians and entertainers Siegfried & Roy, for their show in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Schmitt made a brief return to Europe in 1963 when Ringling sent a unit to tour in Britain, and was given the job of handling a group of elephants bought from Chipperfield's Circus. Hugo Schmitt is said to have performed with 55 elephants at one time in the ring at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, according to the Guinness World Records.

A portion of a letter from the elephant trainer Bill Woodcock to Chappie Fox, in a letter dated June 8, 1961 gives the following statement about Hugo Schmitt:

In 1956 Schmitt was with Leonard Bros. Circus. After the 1955 season with Ringlings, he bought his own elephant, a two-year-old Asian elephant named Targa, from Catskill Game Farm. Targa was later sold to Ringlings, where she remained for the next 30 years, until she died in 1987.

Meanwhile, Lorenz Hagenbeck contacted Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in U.S.A. and offered the elephants. Mr John Ringling North came personally to Sweden and purchased the elephants, on condition that Hugo Schmitt came with them as trainer, and managed to arrange a visa for him and his assistant Axel Gautier, so they could go with the elephants to USA. Trolle Rhodin founded a second circus called Circus Caravan 1948 and toured Sweden with two circuses. Trolle married Axels sister Ingeborg Gautier in 1954, and they joined the Ringlings circus in 1964, when Trolle Rhodin became Ringlings general manager, bringing Circus Caravan with him.

From 1948, Hugo Schmitt was responsible for Ringling's 38 current elephants, plus the 5 he brought from Sweden, and in the end of 1950, Hugo's wife Jenny, and their two sons Manfred and Hugh went with the ocean liner "Stockholm", departing from Gothenburg, to New York and America, where they were interned at Ellis Island in New York for about a month, because Jenny Schmitt had worked for a restaurant owned by a Nazi party member. While the Back in Germany, Lorenz Hagebeck restarted his circus in 1949, but due to the post-war economy crisis in Germany, he permanently closed it down in 1953, while the Schmitt family started a new life in America.

Schmitt toured with Zoo Circus through Sweden on train, also educating a Swedish horse trainer, Gösta Kruse in the art of elephant training. Kruse would later be in charge of two Asian elephants Birka and Safari, which Rhodin bought in 1947, until he left to Bertram Mills Circus in England 1951, and between 1965 and his death in 1973, Gösta Kruse was elephant trainer at Circus Pinder in France.

But contrary to being safe, on March 8, 1947, was written in the Swedish newspapers that the elephants was to be confiscated as spoils of war by Sweden's government. Upset by the decision of the Swedish government to sell the animals of the former German-owned Carl Hagenbeck Circus, Hugo Schmitt turned loose the show's five bulls in Malmö on Feb. 23, 1947. The elephants charged down main street in Malmö, smashing windows, breaking lampposts and terrorizing citizens. Police, after vain attempts to halt the animals, appealed to the trainer, Capt. Hugo Schmidt, to round them up. Weeping bitterly, Schmitt finally consented and regained control of his charges. With tears streaming down his face, Schmitt said: The State is making a great mistake in selling them. They have been trained together and love each other. If they are parted they will die!

Hugo Schmitt, his assistant Axel Gautier, and the five elephants arrived at Ringlings in 20 June 1947.Pittsburgh, and six days later Ringlings last African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) named Abele (later called Emily), was bought from Howard Bary in the Belgian Congo, and added to the show, due to Schmitts previous experience with African elephants.

Hugo Schmitt worked for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1947 to 1973, but also on other shows like Mills Bros. Circus 1950-1953, when Schmitt was called upon by President Dwight Eisenhower to supervise Ringlings elephants in his inaugural parade:

In July 1943 phosphorus bombs fell on Hamburg, causing the circus large damage, and again in November 1944, when Hagenbecks Tierpark was more or less destroyed in 90 minutes. 450 animals and nine men lost their lives. During the first bombs however, Hagenbeck's elephant head keeper Fritz Theisinger took the chains of the elephants, and released them into the out enclosure, in order to save their life. Lorenz Hagenbeck documented the event in his book titled Animals Are My Life:

Then the Second World War started, and in 1940 the circus toured Dessau, and ending up in Danzig, where Lorenz Hagenbecks second son, Herbert Hagenbeck, fell seriously ill and died, before the circus returned to Hamburg.

Under the supervision of Lorenz son Carlo Hagenbeck,, the surviving 8 Arabian horses, camels, Rudolph Mathies with the tigers, and Hugo Schmitt with the five best elephants "Icky", "Karnaudi", "Minjak" (captive-born), "Mutu" and "Sabu", was sent to neutral Sweden, while Hugo's family, his wife Jenny and the two sons Hugh Schmitt (born 1938 in Hamburg-Stellingen), and Manfred Schmitt (born 1942 in Hamburg-Stellingen) stayed behind in Hamburg. Together with Schmitt, also came his elephant assistant, Louis "Lulu" Gautier (1887-1949), and his two children Axel Gautier (1942-1993), and Ingeborg Gautier (1929-2015).

During winter season of 1936 to 1937, Schmitt showed African elephants at the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington, a district in Greater London in England, while the second unit with Walter Kaden in charge of the elephants toured Montevideo in Uruguay from december 1936, then to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and realizing an important tour along the country in 1937, after which Hagenbecks Circus returned to Europe and took up winter quarters in Hagenbecks Viennese circus building in Austria. By then, the circus still had twenty elephants when the last tour in peace time was ended at the Bremen fair.

During the 1930's Hugo Schmitt went several times to India, in order to select elephants to import to Europe, and he married Jenny, from the island Sylt, part of Nordfriesland district, Schleswig-Holstein in north Germany. During this time, unemployment accelerated in Germany and the circus faced such economy problems, that groups of animals, including elephants, were sold to Circus Sarrasani. But a highlight was a successful elephant breeding, when Minjak, although conceived in Leipzig Zoo, was born in January 1932 in Germany. While Schmitt claimed she was born in a Zoo in Essen, the author Gerhard Zapf writes that she was born in the circus elephant tent while on tour in Essen. Lorenz Hagebeck state she was born in the Hagenbeck Zoo in Stellingen, and some even claim she was born in Leipzig Zoo.

In Sweden, they arrived at Zoo Circus, owned by Trolle Rhodin (Olof Trollhaimen Trolle Rhodin 1917-1997), who since 1941 ran his own circus in the township Fosie, outside Malmö in Sweden. Trolle Rhodin was son to famous circus owner "Brazil Jack" (Carl Max Alexander Rhodin 1871-1952). In 1944, Trolle Rhodin bought an African elephant baby, which unfortunately died after short time in the winter quarters.

In 1916 Carl Hagenbecks son Lorenz Hagenbeck (1882-1956) bought a dysfunctional circus with 63 horses and 3 elephants from Adolf Strassburger, thereby founding Carl Hagenbeck Circus-Stellingen, after which Schmitt became chief trainer of elephants at the circus, touring Germany and Europe, while being replaced in the zoo in Hamburg-Stellingen by a new head keeper, Fritz Theisinger (born 1906). In 1929-1930 elephants both from the circus and from the zoo was exhibited, with an impressing number of forty-one elephants at Hamburg Heiligengeist Field. After the opening shows in Hamburg, the larger enterprise went to Scandinavia and the smaller to Holland. During those years, the circus also had some African bull elephants, and Schmitt is claimed to have been one of the first western elephant trainers to work African elephants on circus.

Hugo Schmitt, being son to the lumberjack Peter Schmitt and his wife Anna-Maria, started his career at famous German Tierpark Hagenbeck in Hamburg-Stellingen, founded 1907 by Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913) as Hagenbeck's third zoo in Hamburg.

Hugo Schmitt, born July 19, 1904 in Bann, Landkreis Kaiserslautern, in Southwestern Rheinland-Pfalz in Germany, dead August 9, 1977 in Sarasota, Florida, USA, was a German-American circus artist, animal trainer and one of the worlds most famous elephant trainers with a record of 55 elephants performing in the ring. Starting his career at Carl Hagenbeck Circus-Stellingen in Germany, Schmitt was elephant superintendent at the world's largest circus, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the USA from 1947 to 1971.