Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

What accounted for the success of Karakul in South West Africa? First, whereas Karakul farmers in northern Europe struggled with excessive humidity responsible for all sorts of diseases, South West Africa had an environment very similar to that of the Bukhara region, where the Karakul had originated. Second, South West Africa’s grasses and bushes were perfect fodder for the sheep. Third, local sheep breeds were easily crossed with Karakul.[76] Crucially, the local Damara and Nama sheep breeds, which had also developed fat tails to respond to the harsh environment of South West Africa as Karakul in Bukhara, were easily crossed with pureblood Karakul to produce millions of curly skins that could be exported from the territory. In spite of the strict separation of settlers from natives, the settlers had to tap the animal resources developed by the natives in order to undertake their profitable Karakul business. Even in such extreme cases as imperial genocide as in South West Africa or in Nazi-controlled eastern Europe, settler life is always built on indigenous resources.

^{Figure 6.8 “Karakul, the black diamonds of South West Africa.”}

^{(Ilse Steinhof, Deutsche Heimat in Afrika. Ein Bildbuch aus unsern Kolonien, Wilhelm Limpert, 1939)}

A last element that has to been taken into account when speaking of Karakul in South West Africa takes us back to Germany, specifically to Halle, and the shipment of pureblood Karakul undertaken by Paul Albert Thorer and Julius Kuhn in 1908. Although reproduction of sheep occurred at a good rate thanks to successful crossing with local indigenous stocks, a constant flux of imported pureblood Karakul was essential to extend Karakul farming throughout the Namibian plateau. Such transfers were more difficult after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the prohibition on exporting Karakul from Uzbekistan decreed by the Soviet authorities. Thus, even though South West Africa was now being ruled by the Union of South Africa as a mandate of the Society of Nations, Germany would remain in the 1920s its first source of pureblood Karakul. The flock at the University of Halle was the main supplier of both German and Afrikaner Karakul farmers.[77] In 1928, Gustav Frölich was even able to travel to West Turkestan, where he acquired 22 pureblood Karakul for the purpose of sending them to South West Africa. Two years later, Frölich visited himself South West Africa to get acquainted with local flocks and farmers. German farmers in South West Africa, and their sons and daughters, were also a regular presence at Halle, making the long trip to Europe to attend Frölich classes on animal breeding.[78] In the Nazi years these farmers would be celebrated in the official press of the regime, such as the Illustrierte Beobachter, as model keepers of Germanness in hostile territory and as embodying the values of future German frontier settlement.[79]

Long after South West Africa had been lost by Germany, Halle scientists, trying to demonstrate the significance of their research, repeatedly invoked in their publications the importance of their flock for the good progress of Karakul farms in that territory.[80] In the European New Order proclaimed by Adolf Hitler in 1941, the Persian furs wore by the women of the Nazi elite were to be supplied by German settlers, reproducing the South West Africa experience in eastern Europe. To invoke the historical importance of research done at Halle for the thriving of German communities in South West Africa was to assert the importance of esoteric concerns with the genetics of hair development for the expansion of the Reich into eastern Europe.

Circulating Karakul II: Germany, Italy, Libya, and Ethiopia