BERLIN — A polar bear died and the zoo’s director decided to stuff its body and put it on display in a museum. (The director prefers the technical term, dermoplastik, though to most people it’s stuffed.)

And that would be that, except this polar bear was on the cover of Vanity Fair (beside Leonardo DiCaprio), has a fan club in Japan and followers in Fiji, and was the most famous four-legged resident of this city and the most renowned polar bear in the world.

We’re talking Knut, the Berlin Zoo’s hand-raised polar bear.

“When someone dies in your family I think you don’t want him stuffed in a museum,” said Jochen Kolbe, 31, who is leading a protest movement to block the planned taxidermy. “Knut is not only a polar bear for people, he is a friend, a family member.”

Now, hold on before casting any judgments. The nemesis of the anti-stuffing crowd is the zoo’s director, Bernhard Blaszkiewitz, a man whose zoo marketed this bear from birth, made millions off its presence, sold plush toy Knuts for nearly $30 and Knut baby videos for the same, and even registered “Knut” as a trademark. Now, Mr. Blaszkiewitz says he is shocked at how much people feel for this animal, who died, quite suddenly, at the age of 4 ½ last month.