History of the Breed
The History of the Leonberger
As you know, the Leonberger is a German breed which explains why Germany is the only country allowed to change the standard (eventually). He is a mountain of a dog originating from Swabia (Baden-Wurtenburg) in the foothills of the Black Forest near a picturesque and hilly country called the Swabian Alps.
The name Leonberger is derived from the name of a small, lively town, Leonberg, that was once the centre of a rural community. Now industry has been developing there at great speed.
Leonberg is situated about 15 kilometres from Strutgart and about 50 kilometres from Rottweil, the cradle of that other dog, the Rottweiler. The ending of the word -er- means belonging to, coming from, so when you speak of a Leonberger dog you mean a dog from leonberg, just as a Rottweiler is a dog coming from Rottweil.
Whether the leonberger is a pure breed of the result of a successful mixing up of several breeds was, and still is, a subject for discussion. The people of Leonberg firmly believe in what I personally call the 'Essig Legend'. We will examine later on what is to be thought of it.
As far as we know, the 19th century has seen the reation and the development of quite a few 'new' breeds besides the fixing up of some older ones by means of a strict selection. For some people the Leonberger may be a cross but isn't that the way many of today's breeds made their start? Some of them had succeeded rather early in achieving great success and celebrity. Such was the case with the Leonberger in the second half of the 19th century, especially around 1860 and 1870. The breed was so famous at that time that well off people all over Europe would pay up to 1200DM for a fine specimen - which was a lot of money of course if you think of the value of money then. 1200-15ooDM is about the price you will have to pay now in Germany and in Belgium for a puppy. A Leonberger puppy will fetch a somewhat higher price in France and Switzerland.
The Leonberger was cleverly brought into fashion by the man who is considered to be the creator of the breed - Heinrich Essig. Wanting to imitate great celebrities he certainly had a keen sense of useful public relations and of trading to his own profit. He presented (offered) fine specimens of his breeding to kings, princes and to politicians of his time so the 'posh' people in Europe paid top prices to buy such a dog, just for showing off, which I think is always a pity for all breeds. This does not only mean that the best specimens were went out of the country but also that opportunists seized the opportunity to make money and started breeding and inter-crossing all kinds of dogs which were sold as Leonbergers.
Fashion is fickle. Essig died in 1889. As far as we know he did not leave or even write up any notes in a scrapbook. He did not specify any racial points nor mention a selecting method. Soon the success declined and leonbergers were mocked at until about 1890 when the Klub von Leonberger Junden was created in Apolda followed by the moving of the seat to heidelberg, later to Strutgart and finally to Leonberg.
Albert Kull wrote the first standard in 1895 so we can say that the breeding started in 1895. Then came the First World War. The Leonberger would have disappeared were it not for the efforts of a few lovers of the breed - the Leonberger population was decimated. I was told there were only three really good dogs left in Germany. A very small number of people had succeeded in keeping their dogs alive, among them Albert Kienzie who dies some years ago. In 1958 there were between 300 and 400 registered dogs, there are now more than 8000 Leonbergers in the world.
Let us now come back to the 'Essig legend'. Essig lived from 1808 to 1889. He was a great animal lover and kept different species on his estate, among them about 60 dogs. He was a showman and certainly a very clever man and merchant. The people in his time were very fond of romantic stories about the courage and heroism of the St Bernard and the Newfoundland. He decided that he would breed a dog that would rival those two successful and popular breeds and at the same time make known the town he was living in. If we translate the name of the town literally we would have 'mountain of the lion'. I do not know for sure whether the word 'Leo' refers to lion, it might have been a surname, at any rate there is a lion in the town crest.
Being fortunate, popular and certainly educated, Essig became a town councillor and one of the foremost citizens in his town which allowed him to get in touch with the 'big shots' and definately helped him to sell the products of his breeding at top prices. He bred and sold dogs for about 50 years at the rate of 200-300 dogs per year, the money helping him to continue his breeding experiments.
Since there was a lion in the town crest, he wanted breed a lion-like dog. According the the 'legend' he first mated a black and white Landseer bitch to a long haired St Bernard, a dog of great size which he acquired from the St. Bernard Monastery (do not forget this - long haired St Bernard whereas we know for sure that the original St Bernards were smooth haired) Essig then proceeded by close in-breeding. The results of these first matings were at first black and white spotted dogs, the size of the St Bernard. He then crossed once more a white and yellow St Bernard which he fetched from the Monastery and in exchange he gave the monks two 'Leonberger' dogs he himself had bred. He chiefly wanted to obtain a white coloured dog (a colour very much in fashion in top circles) and interbred his products with a white Pyrenean Mountain dog he had in his kennels. The result of all this was a dog of light, silver-grey colour which immediately met with great success and was soon in great demant.
In 1846 the name Leonberger appeared for the first time in 'cynological' circles. The first Leonbergers were big dogs, mainly white (and spotted) or silver-grey with a blak head and black ears, sometimes a brown mask and brown ears (now a fault in the breed). The yellow dogs with the black mask came later. The silver-grey variety disappeared from the standard in the 1973 version.
In 1865 Essig showed a dog in Munich which was yellow and brown with black shades. He was described as a fine dog, resembling a lion. Essig was a successful (breeder) and dog merchant and, as I have alread said, all the 'big shots' wanted a Leonberger. I will not quote the whole list of them but you might like to know that Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden had one, Richard Wagner, Bismarck, Garibaldi, the Prince of Wales (the future Edward V11), Napoleon 111, the Empress of Austria. Elizabeth had seven of them, silver-grey with brown ears and mask.
After Essig's death things turned for the worse. There was no standard of the breed, no scrapbook, no selection programme. Swindlers had bred and sold all kinds of tall dogs under whatever name they thought of. The Leonberger was mocked at and called the Leonhardiner. Richard Syrebel, who was a painter and took a great interest in dogs, wrote in his book on German dogs full of sketches he had made of the different German breeds, that he doubted the legend and said the Leonberger appeared just at a moment when the St Bernards were very much in demand. The start, he says, was the consequence of inter-crossing pure St Bernards with long haired dogs that resembled them. From these matings there resulted on the one hand St Bernards and, on the other hand, very fine tall dogs of quite a different type. They were called 'Alp Dogs' - Mountain Dogs - finally Leonbergers, after the place where most of them were coming from, because leonberg was a flourishing market town.
And now we come to the heart of the matter. I do hope you will not think it too intricate a matter.
As long ago in the past as we can tell there has been ,and there still is, a horse fair in Leonberg. Once a year there is a very important horse market in February. As I have already told you, big dogs of a certain type were also offered for sale, as was the case in Rottweil which was an important centre for the trade in horned cattle. These dogs probably accompanied the horse dealers just as the Rottwielers accompanied the farmers and butchers and protected flocks. More and more people see in these dogs the origin of the Leonberger, among them Letellier and Lucquet in France and Nijboer in Holland.
The old Leonberger may have originated from the old Alp Dog, a breed mentioned by some authors at the end of the 19th century. The breed was widely distributed in a vast region extending from the Rhaetian Alps (the Grisons) to Austria. The breed disappeared after the big wild predators (wolves, bears and lynxes) had been exterminated in that part of Europe. For centuries the chief centre of distribution in Germany is said to have been leonberg, where a dog market as well as a horse market had existed ever since the 13th century. People owned those big mountain dogs to protect themselves and their herds against wolves etc. In the hilly parts those big dogs were crossed with local dogs, the progeny were lighter and smaller. They gave birth to the Hovawarts (there is indeed more similarity between the head of a Hovawart and the head of a Leonberger). These lighter dogs were sometimes called Wurtenberg Shepherd dogs. Von Stepanitz (creator of the GS) used the breed in his building up of the famouse GS.
We can also seek evidence in genetics.
Essig described the evolution as such:
According to the diary of the Princess of Mettemick, Austrian Leonberger-like dogs were already being bred in the family kennels as early as the 17th century. An old chronicle of Wurtenberg states that in 1771 a Leonberger dog was sold. Marie-Antoinette had one. Such dogs wer the melting pot from which the Leonberger emerged.
Before concluding I must also point out the following:
In 1820 Essig was 12 years old.
An outbreak of distemper and a terrible storm decimated the St Bernard Monastery kennels and two bitches from Leonberg were sent to the Monastery and mated witht he only dog that had survived the tragedy. Essis said to have used a St Bernard. That dog must have been a descendant of the bitches that had come from leonberg which meants that he bred in the same line. We also know that he later fetched two more St Bernards from the Monastery and offered two of his own dogs in exchange to help relplace the stock that had once again been decimated. We can infer that the dogs from Leonberg (and not the St Bernard) contributed to the creation of the breed.
The History of the Leonberger - by Nelly Leonard
copied with kind permission from Fred Inwood - taken from his book 'My love affair with Leonbergers'
