Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

Indeed, an attempt to raise Karakul far from their place of origin was the reason they were first brought to Halle in 1903. Julius Kühn, then director of the Agriculture Institute, who was also responsible for making animal breeding a main area of activity at the University of Halle, imported the first lot of four rams and twenty-six ewes from Bukhara in Uzbekistan, one of the historical sites of the Silk Road. The initiative was undertaken jointly with Paul Albert Thorer, head of a major fur firm in Leipzig.

The aim was to bring Karakul into Germany and explore the possibility of raising them in the poor sandy soils of the eastern parts of the country and thus dispensing with the troublesome importation of pelts from central Asia.[53] Kühn’s first acclimation experiments had demonstrated that the curly patterns of Karakul furs were kept constant with a diet of German fodder, against the common perception that Bukhara’s unique environment was responsible for the distinctive curl patterns. In other words, Kühn had demonstrated the independence of curls from the environment and had established that they were heritable. The transmission of curly patterns through generations made possible to think of the geographical spread of Karakul. Vertical heredity enabled horizontal expansion.

However, the major success in the acclimation of the Halle sheep occurred not in Europe but in South West Africa.[54] The association between the academic Kühn and the pelt merchant Paul Albert Thorer was also responsible for launching Karakul farming in the German colony of South West Africa, now Namibia.[55] In a letter written in 1906 to the governor of the colony, Friedrich von Lindequist, Thorer informed the governor about his eagerness concerning the breeding of Karakul in South West Africa.[56] For the promotion of pelt production in South West Africa, he would “donate three rams and 23 ewes from the stud at Halle” and also acquire animals directly in Bukhara. In February 1909, 22 rams, 252 ewes, and 14 lambs were offloaded at the port of Swakopmund in German South West Africa.[57]

Anyone familiar with the history of South West Africa would place this apparently innocent circulation of sheep in the violent context of Germany’s colonial experience.[58] The projects for the establishment of Karakul farms in South West Africa were a direct consequence of the 1904–1907 wars against the Herero and Nama, which resulted in the annihilation of approximately 80 percent of the Herero and half of the Nama by the German Protection Forces (Schutztruppe) commanded by General von Trotha, with a death toll estimated at 70,000.[59] The combination of quarantining captives in the Namib Desert, poisoning water holes and wells, deporting people to other German colonies, and imprisoning many people in concentration camps makes it hard to avoid comparisons with other genocides. The Herero war has been used to make comparisons between colonial practices in Africa and the Nazis’ behavior in occupied Europe.[60] This literature has nevertheless recently come under harsh criticism because of the difficulty in establishing concrete historical ties between the two imperial experiences.[61] Here, in order to overcome some of that criticism, African and European experiences of the frontier are connected through Karakul. It is not just a matter of formal comparison; it is also a matter of material circulation of industrialized organisms.

As in eastern Europe under Nazi rule, the metaphors of the American frontier helped make sense of German colonizers’ actions in South West Africa. According to Shelly Baranowsky, General Lothar von Trotha suggested that natives follow the example of Native Americans and disappear in favor of European settlers.[62] The war had begun in 1904 when the Herero had reacted violently to the loss of their lands to German settlers. The Imperial German Colonial Office had planned to have settlers form outposts of Germanness, “organizing rural communities grounded in the values of hard work, thrift, the patriarchal family, and ethnic unity.”[63] The role of natives was clear in such schemes: they were a pool of cheap labor for settlers and for colonial administrators.[64]