The Modern Dog Encyclopedia – German Shepherd Dog

The Modern Dog Encyclopedia – German Shepherd Dog

The Modern Dog Encyclopedia was published in 1949 by Stackpole and Heck, Inc. for Brown & Bigelow, edited by Henry P. Davis. The section on the German Shepherd Dog is reprinted here, in part, for the benefit of contemporary breeders, exhibitors, and judges.

It should be understood that, following the Franco-Prussian war, that is, about 1880, Europeans developed an extraordinary interest in dog shows, and at the same time, a passion for sheep dogs. Each small market district had its own variety of sheep, cattle, and drover’s dogs.

But the days of their greatest use were coming to an end. The railroad was making cattle driving unnecessary. Ranges were being fenced. The wolves were gone from the mountain slopes. Population pressures were making intensive livestock raising in relatively restricted areas necessary.

The sportsmen of that day were looking for dogs with which they might enter the new sport of dog showing. They looked for the outlandish; for dogs which could be promoted; and finally, for dogs of beauty. But they realized suddenly too, that the shepherd dog, with his amazing and almost human abilities, was a part of a fast vanishing past.

The Germans began to seek means of perpetuating these sheep and cattle dogs. And they also casted about for a means of utilizing the abilities of the dogs. So the first attempts at training dogs for police and war work began to be made.

This would appear to be the true background of the shepherd dogs of all of Europe. For the Dutch, the Belgians, and the French began to improve and fix the types of their breeds, almost at the same time. To a certain extent, so did the Swiss, the Hungarians, Spaniards, Italians, and Austrians. The Germans, in some cases, helped the others, particularly the Kuvasz, Komondor, and Puli.

We can start the first real history of the German Shepherd, as distinct from other shepherds, in 1891. That year, the Phylax Society was founded to sponsor the breed. Two men, Captain Reichelmann-Dunau, and Graf von Hahn, were dominant in it. Others were Herr Wachsmuth and Herr Sparwasser, who liked “fancy dogs.”

This society died in 1894. It collapsed because of an argument which was raged in every specialty club devoted to working or sporting dogs which has been founded since. One group wanted to breed exclusively for herding, driving, and protection instincts. The other wanted to fix the type until the German Shepherd would be a thing of beauty unequaled in the world.

In 1896, the European dog fancy was fairly electrified when Dr. Gerland of Hildesheim introduced trained police dogs. Gerland’s work had followed that of another Hildesheimer, Captain Schoenherr who, in 1886, had used dogs to clear up disorders which the police had not been able to handle. Captain Schoenherr later became the head of the Prussian Government Breeding and Instruction School of Service Dogs at Grunheide.

The fact that these rapidly-vanishing shepherd dogs could be at once a thing of beauty and a police or war dog lent point to the efforts of German fanciers to save their shepherd dogs. They went to work with vast enthusiasm.

Now the great shepherd dog areas of Germany were in Wurttemberg, alongside Switzerland and the Alps; Bavaria on the Czech border, and more particularly that part called Swabia; and Thuringia, in Central Germany. The dogs of these areas varied in coat, size—ranging from 21 to 28 inches at the shoulder—tail carriage, ear carriage, etc.

According to von Stephanitz himself, the Thuringian shepherd was used to get erect ears. The Wurttemberg dogs had “lopped ears,” but had reliability of tail carriage. Finally, a big Swabian working dog was added.

This brings us to the next important date—1899. In that year the “Der Verein fur Deutsche Schaferhunde” (Society for the Promotion of the Breeding of German Shepherd Dogs) was founded. Captain Max von Stephanitz was its head from April 22, 1899, until July 1, 1935. He was a breeding genius, and he ruled the organization with an iron, if benevolent, hand.

It was von Stephanitz himself who added in the Swabian dog, Audifax von Grafath. He was “pitch forked into the breed as an absolute outsider. It was about that time—1902—a necessary attempt [was made] to give a broader basis to the breed. A big, mighty fellow, with excellent dorsal muscles and a correspondingly swift gait, Audifax certainly transmitted these good qualities and often, his somewhat over-developed head as well.” Those were von Stephanitz’s words.

Thus, it might be said that the German Shepherd gets its erect ears and wolf-gray color from the Thuringian; his tail carriage and other colors from the Wurttemberg; and his size, great strength of back, and gait from the Swabian.

Pictures of some of these dogs are still extant. They were a weedy lot, though some of them were beginning to look like German Shepherds. Their mixed origin, however, produced several varieties. Thus, in 1915, Mason reported there were three coat varieties.

He listed them as (1) Smooth; (2) Long haired, wavy, but hard, with the hair partially covering the eyes; and (3) Wire haired, with beard and tuft over the eye brows.

According to Elliot Humphrey of The Seeing Eye, there were 450 police stations using dogs in Germany as early as 1910. Most of these dogs were German Shepherds. By the end of World War I, 48,000 dogs were in German Army service, plus countless others in civilian police work. Most of these, too, were German Shepherds, although the war and police service must be given credit for rescuing a number of other breeds from extinction.

Still, the battle between the working Shepherd owners and the show fanciers continued. Humphrey says that the last whelping to produce both show and work[ing] winners was in 1909. After that, the German Shepherd became primarily a show dog until Obedience trials made possible the working and showing of the same dog at the same show.

The Germans then began an intensive breeding program to fix type. They created a modern miracle, and yet they sowed the seeds for what later became a disaster to the breed. For somewhere, shyness crept in. It did not appear so often in Germany, at least at first, but it played havoc with foreign breeders who did not understand what they were up against. However, the results of this did not show up until much later.

Some of the dogs which were considered pillars of the breed before 1909 were: Tell v d Kriminalpolizi; Luchs von Kalsmundt-Wetzler; Beowulf; Hettel Uckermark; Roland v Starkenberg; Dewelt Barbarosso; Garf Eberhard von Hohen Esp; Horrand von Grafath; and Hektor von Schwaben.

The latter was German Grand Champion in 1901. There is a good picture of him extant, so that it is possible to compare him with dogs of each of the following decades. In something less than 20 years, the modern German Shepherd was created from dogs such as Hektor.