Daniel Materna and Andreas Fries are two of the nine elephant keepers at Hellabrunn Zoo. Materna, who is also a trained zoologist, leads the team. Four elephants currently live in the 8,000 square meter Munich facility. A special attraction is little Otto, who was born in Hellabrunn in 2020.
As in other zoos, the Munich zoo switched from direct to so-called protected contact some time ago. Fries in particular initially viewed this innovation with skepticism. When he started with the elephants 43 years ago, he was still allowed to ride the pachyderms through the zoo. He and Materna explain what works much better when dealing with animals now and what visitors can experience as a result. The two give an insight into their everyday work, talk about what has changed in their tasks, how much food the animals eat every day – and under what circumstances they would also take in elephants from Botswana.
For the Munich editorial podcast, Ulrike Heidenreich and René Hofmann, the heads of the Munich, Region and Bavaria department, as well as people editor Sabine Buchwald and social editor Jana Jöbstl meet alternately with different guests. They pick you up from where you live or work, sometimes by tram, subway, sometimes in a taxi or even on foot. Or they arrange to meet at special places in the city for a conversation.
It’s about current projects and very personal plans, about topics that move the city. The SZ podcast team invites people who have a connection to Munich. You live in the city or are visiting. They come from the areas of politics, gastronomy, culture, sport or media.
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“Munich Personal” is the podcast South German newspaper about people and issues that move the city. The podcast appears every two weeks. Don’t miss an episode and subscribe to our audio offering in your favorite podcast app or at iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, AudioNow. You can find an overview of all our podcasts at www.sz.de/podcast and Here you can find out how you can listen to our podcasts.