Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

The head of the Kriwoj Rog Karakul Experiment Station was Hans Hornitschek, who had temporarily left his post at the Animal Breeding Institute of the University of Halle to assist the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories in settling the frontier. When Rosenberg’s ministry tried to hire Hornitschek for a permanent position, the director of the Halle Agricultural College, Robert Gärtner, vehemently refused, arguing his importance in the handling of Halle’s own Karakul flock. After the premature death in 1940 of his mentor Gustav Frölich, the main animal-breeding scientist at Halle, Hornitschek earned the status of first German expert in the breeding of Karakul, being the co-author with Frölich of the “Das Karakulschaf und seine Zucht” (“The Karakul sheep and its breeding”).[30] Gärtner reminded Rosenberg that the more than 500 Karakul sheep in Halle were the purest flock in all Europe and had already contributed to the ongoing colonization efforts through the distribution of certified rams in the eastern territories. If Hornitschek left Halle for Kriwoj Rog, Gärtner warned, the quality of the Halle animals was doomed to decline, and that would have severe consequences for the production of Karakul pelts all over Europe.[31]

As evidence of the importance ascribed to the Halle flock, one need only consider another transfer of Karakul, this one from the University of Halle to the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Animal Breeding in Dummerstorf near Rostock in the Province of Mecklenburg and back. After Gustav Frölich assumed the direction of the latter in 1939, the University of Halle had agreed to lease its sheep to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for no more than three years so that Frölich could continue his research program in his new post at Dummerstorf.[32] As I have mentioned, Frölich asserted that the institute would be the largest scientific animal-breeding facility in Europe, exploring the potential of artificial insemination to bring rapid change in the animal-breeding scene of the newly colonized areas to the east. I also have mentioned the laboratory facilities, residential buildings, a school, a swimming pool, a community building with social facilities, farm buildings, and of course many stables, with green areas surrounding all facilities, and streets and squares lined with dense rows of trees. As the annual report of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society proudly asserted, the architects of the new institute were able to design not only a bodenständig institute but also a model for the settler communities the Germans would establish on their eastern frontier.

^{Figure 6.3 The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Animal Breeding depicted as a model settlement, 1941.}

^{(Jahrbuch der Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, 1941)}

Asked to put a price to the operation of transferring Karakul from Halle to Dummerstorf, Frölich argued that his flock was priceless, since there would be no way to acquire new purebred animals—their area of origin was controlled by the Soviet Union.[33] But the Kaiser Wilhelm Society paid the university 126,900 RM for the leasing of 142 rams and 380 ewes. In comparison, the society paid Frölich 15,000 RM a year as director of the institute. When Frölich died, in August of 1940, the university was quick to demand the immediate return of the sheep, and in December of that year they were back in their home stable in Halle.[34] Also back in Halle was Hornitschek, who had followed both the Karakul and Frölich to Dummerstorf.

^{Figure 6.4 The front cover of Das Karakulschaf und seine Zucht, a book by Gustav Frölich and Hans Hornitschek (F. C. Mayer, 1942).}