German Rex

Infobox Catbreed
name = German Rex

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country = German Democratic Republic
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German Rex is a breed of domestic cat. They are a medium sized, breed with slender legs of a medium length. The head is round with well developed cheeks and large, open, ears. The eyes are of medium size in colours related to the coat colour. The coat is silky and short, with a tendency to curl. The whiskers also curl, though less strongly than in the Cornish Rex and they may be nearly straight. All colours of coat, including white, are allowed. The body development is heavier than the Cornish Rex - more like the European Shorthairs. A German Rex cat is very friendly and quickly makes contact with its owner. It is lively, playful and intelligent. It is the master of all acrobatic tricks, which it repeats again and again with huge enjoyment. Its temperament is much the same as a Cornish Rex.

German Rex breeding was in the doldrums in the mid-70's, but there is now a group of keen breeders in Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Russia, Denmark and Holland that are re-establishing the breed.

An early Rex-type cat from Germany was "Kater Munk", a cat of the family of one Erna Schneider, that was born 1930 or 1931 in a village near then-Königsberg, German Reich (today's Kaliningrad, Russia). "Munk" was the son of a mahoganyVerify source|date=August 2007 Angora cat and a Russian Blue. There were one (some sources say two) other curly cat(s) in the litter which was castrated early. "Munk" spread his genes plentifully among the village's cat population til his death in 1944 or 1945. The Schneiders valued the strong tom with a penchant for catching fish from the family's garden pond for himself, not for his curly coat; he was, it seems, referred to colloqially as a "Preußig Rex" ("Prussian Rex", in localVerify source|date=August 2007 dialect). German Rex researchers do not consider Kater Munk to be related to the German Rex breed [http://pawpeds.com/pawacademy/history/germanrex/] and state that he was never bred.

In the summer of 1951, a doctor in Berlin-Buch (Pankow borough), Rose Scheuer-Karpin, noticed a black curly-coated cat in the "Hufelandklinik" hospital garden. The clinic's personnel told her that they had known the cat since 1947. The doctor named the cat "Lämmchen" (German for "little lamb"). Her supposition that she must be the result of a mutation, was shown to be correct. Thus "Lämmchen" was the first breeder-owned rex type cat and the maternal ancestor of all the current German Rex.

The first two German Rex deliberately bred were two rex kittens from a 1957 litter of four, offsping of "Lämmchen" and the straight-coated son "Fridolin" she had with a stray black tom "Blackie" adopted by Scheuer-Karpin. "Lämmchen" died on December 19, 1964 or in 1967, indicating she had been very young when first sighted in 1947. She left a number of Rex and hybrid descendants - the last one of her offspring was born in 1962 -, most of which were used to improve other breeds such as the Cornish Rex which was suffering from skin problems due to being decended from genetically impoverished thoroughbred stock. In 1968, the lineage hinged on the efforts of the GDR cattery "vom Grund" who acquired the last 3 Rex offspring of "Lämmchen" not sold abroads, and amplified the lineage with European Shorthair and mixed-breeds. A stock was established in the West through the efforts of the FRG "von Zeitz" cattery in 1973 which in the previous year had acquired their sample of the allele with the white female hybrid "Silke vom Grund". After some years, the breed slowly became more plentiful.

It is not certainly known how "Lämmchen" relates to "Munk", only that the German Rex mutation - on the same gene as in the Cornish Rex - is recessive, meaning it will only show when both alleles are "rex", and that "Munk" is the first thoroughly documented rex cat, though as stories of "children cuddling curly coated kittens"Fact|date=August 2007 attest, rex alleles turn up every now and then. Presumably, "Munk" sired many offspring with local cats, none of which would have had curly fur as the allele of "Munk"'s straight-haired mates would dominate. In the following years, any curly-haired cats in the Königsberg area went unnoticed or at least were not bred on purpose; the allele nonetheless would have stood good chances to remain in the local cat population, as recessive alleles have a very low probability to disappear entirely.

It is highly probable that "Lämmchen" was a grand- or great-granddaughter of "Munk"; Germans fleeing or emigrating from East Prussia at the end of World War II would have at least tried to take beloved pets with them, and with these, "Munk"'s genetic legacy could have arrived in Berlin. The outskirts of Germany's largest city would seem a natural place for many refugees to wind up eventually, and despite the impossibility to prove that the German Rex lineage goes back to "Munk", between 1947 and the birth of the first Cornish Rex "Kallibunker" at Bodmin Moor (England) in 1950, "Lämmchen" was the only Rex cat documented to exist anywhere in the world. Indeed, it turned out eventually that "Lämmchen" had belonged to a male nurse who arrived in Berlin around 1945 from his native Königsberg.

Another Rex cat turned up in Berlin-Buch, apparently in the late 1950s. The tom named "Schnurzel" eventually contributed to German Rex breeding; it is not known how he related to "Lämmchen" but presumably he was a grandson of hers, as Scheuer-Karpin would let her cats roam free through the gardens and forests of Buch. Even in more recent times, the genetic legacy of "Lämmchen" if not "Munk" manifests itself on occasion in the Berlin area, such as "Pumina", found as a stray in 1992 some 14 km (9 miles) from the old "Hufelandklinik" grounds. The lineage of "Preuss from Siegburg" which turned up in 1979 in the Rhineland town of Siegburg does not appear to be related to be a German Rex proper; it is almost certainly not related to "Lämmchen". Nonetheless, his descendants may have contributed to the German Rex lineage of today.

References

* Batchelor, Anthony (2006): " [http://www.pawpeds.com/pawacademy/history/germanrex/ The revival of the German Rex] ". PawAcademy article.
* Jaenicke, Ilona (2007): " [http://www.german-rex.de/Geschichte/geschichte.htm Die Geschichte der German Rex] " [in German] . Version of 2007-JUN-04. Retrieved 2007-AUG-15.
* Rex & Sphynxklubben: " [http://www.rexsphynxklubben.dk/histo_gb.html#german_hist The German Rex History] ". Retrieved 2007-AUG-15.