Famous dachshunds in history: notable dogs across the centuries

Part 1

Why dachshunds turn up so often in history

If your dog is a dachshund, its ancestors were bred by German hunters to chase badgers underground. Their long bodies, short legs, and loose skin let them slip into tight burrows, while their long snouts held plenty of room for tracking scent. Breeders eventually settled on three sizes, standard, miniature, and kaninchen, along with three coat types, smooth, long haired, and wire haired. That distinctive shape is also why people still call them sausage dogs, hot dogs, or wiener dogs.

Part 2

Waldi: the first Olympic mascot

In 1972, a dachshund named Waldi became the official mascot of the Summer Olympics in Munich, the first time the Games had an official mascot. Designer Otl Aicher created Waldi, basing the look on a real long haired dachshund named Cherie von Birkenhof. Aicher said Waldi was meant to stand for resistance, tenacity, and agility, the qualities organizers wanted from Olympic athletes. Waldi's bright colors left out black and red on purpose, since those colors were linked to the National Socialist Party. Even the marathon route was laid out to trace Waldi's shape, running from the back of his neck through Nymphenburg Park and the English Garden and finally into the stadium. If your dog is a dachshund, you can picture that shape: a long body and short legs stretched across an entire city's streets. More than two million Waldi souvenirs were sold around the world, and his success helped set a pattern that later Olympic Games followed with their own mascots.

Part 3

Dachshunds in art and literature

Pablo Picasso's dachshund Lump was born in 1956 in Stuttgart, Germany, and belonged to the photographer David Douglas Duncan. Duncan brought Lump along on a visit to Picasso's home in Cannes in 1957, and the dog ended up staying with the artist for six years. Picasso painted a portrait of Lump on a dinner plate the day they met, and he later included Lump in many of his colorful reworkings of Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas. Picasso completed 44 studies in that series, and Lump appears in fifteen of them. Lump died in March 1973, just ten days before Picasso himself.

Andy Warhol and David Hockney also kept dachshunds. Andy Warhol kept dachshunds named Archie and Amos and included them in his work, and David Hockney did the same with his own dachshunds, Stanley and Boogie.

Part 4

How the dachshund became a cultural symbol

Waldi was the first official Olympic mascot, made for the 1972 Munich Games. The breed also caught the eye of artists away from any stadium, including Picasso, Warhol, and Hockney. People still use the playful nicknames sausage dog, hot dog, and wiener dog for the breed, which was bred to hunt badgers underground. Whether or not your own dog is a dachshund, Aicher designed Waldi to represent resistance, tenacity, and agility.