The Great Ones – Int. Ch. Dorian von Marienhof of Mazelaine, SOM, LOM
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By Kerrin Winter-Churchill
The year is 1934, and America is in the midst of the Great Depression. While the middle and working classes struggle to survive, members of the American Leisure Class quietly downsize their companies, cut expenditures and focus instead on their personal sports and passions. Bread lines and soup kitchens are a reality for millions of people during this period, but in stark contrast golf, polo, and the sport of purebred dogs are still thriving when the gritty, optimistic FDR is chosen to guide the American nation.
Germany, too, is in a crisis and inflation is out of control. The average German family pays a wheelbarrow full of money for one loaf of bread. As in America, a charismatic leader steps up to the plate, promising economic freedom with fierce speeches of Germany’s heroic legacy. But Adolf Hitler is a dark figure and the winds of war and destruction are looming. As many do in a crisis, Germans try to forget the problems of a nation by focusing on their passions: German dog shows thrive in the ‘30s. If the German Shepherd is king, then the Boxer is the crown prince of the Vaterland.
Mrs. John P. Wagner, known as “Mazie” by all who loved her, was a young American woman of great means. She and her husband had been involved in the sport of purebred dogs for almost twenty years under the “Mazelaine” prefix. Beginning and achieving great success in Great Danes, they eventually migrated to Boxers and fell in love with the breed. Already seasoned importers, the Wagners knew the German brokering landscape, and Mazie arrived in Berlin just in time for the Boxer Sieger show of 1934.
Whelped in April of 1933, Dorian von Marienhof was still quite young, but word of him had reached deeply throughout the German fancy. He was a sensation! Dorian took Berlin by storm and the German judges, known for their austerely critical analysis, found themselves using superlatives such as “marvelous” and “exquisite”, proclaiming him to be of “the finest living show specimens in the world.”
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Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=199458
Posted by AnthonyA
on Apr 13 2021. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
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