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Concept
Heck cattle
Summary
The Heck or Munich-Berlin is a German breed or type of domestic cattle. It was bred in the 1920s by Heinz and Lutz Heck in an attempt to breed back the extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius). Controversy revolves around methodology and success of the programme. There are considerable differences between Heck cattle and the aurochs in build, height, and body proportions. Furthermore, there are other cattle breeds which resemble their wild ancestors at least as much as Heck cattle.
Heck cattle originated in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt to breed back domestic cattle to their ancestral form: the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius). In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck independently started their extensive breeding-back programmes.
Their motivation was to rescue the aurochs from oblivion because it was constantly confused with the European bison, the other large bovine of Holocene Europe. The Heck brothers believed that creating a look-alike and showing both species next to each other would help to show the difference between the two species to a broader public. Apart from that, they believed they were able to reconstruct the species and therefore to correct the mistake man made when killing the species off.
Heinz was the director of the Hellabrunn Zoological Gardens in Munich and Lutz of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. Only eleven years after they started their breeding experiments, just as the Weimar Republic was drawing to a close, they each announced success.
Lutz Heck used Spanish Fighting Bulls for his breed, some of which were released in the Polish Romincka Forest, but survived until the late 1940s when they were killed during the end of the Second World War. Rewilding Lutz Heck's cattle breed was met with objection since the beginnings of this project, as these cattle were aggressive and their ecological impact on the native fauna was considered to be unpredictable. Later rewilding attempts in Poland were rejected.
Lutz Heck's cattle were exterminated at the end of the Second World war.
Official source
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