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Veterinary Medicine and Animal Welfare Discourses in the Third Reich

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Abstract

After the National Socialists assumed power in 1933, their ideas on animal welfare gained a foothold in veterinary organizations. Moreover, veterinary authorities as well as practitioners themselves influenced and shaped this particular form of animal welfare, which departed from frameworks such as those offered by the animal protection movement. Not only did leading figures of the profession commit themselves to work in animal welfare organizations, they were also complicit in helping with the ideological purges that followed the “Gleichschaltung,” which forced the more radical elements of the animal protection movement into line with Nazi ideology. Drawing on a discourse analysis of the leading weeklies of the veterinary profession and the major animal welfare journals of the time, this paper analyses overlapping discourses on the meaning of animal welfare and how these discourses were integrated in the National Socialist leitmotivs of national wealth and the nationalist concept of a folk community. It also considers how the veterinary profession’s to be the sole “advocate and helper of animals” affected the relationship between the animal protection movement and veterinary institutions.

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Notes

  1. These include the Deutsche Tierärztliche Wochenschrift, the Deutsche Tierärzteblatt, the Berliner Tierärztliche Wochenschrift. and Berliner und Münchener Tierärztliche Wochenschrift.

  2. Reichstierschutzblatt, Der Deutsche Tierfreund.

  3. Norbert Frei has provided a chronological framework for National Socialism in which he differentiates between the time of formation (1933–1934), consolidation (1935–1928), and radicalization (1939–1945) (Frei 2001).

  4. Some words that originated within the so called “Lingua Tertii Impirii” (Victor Klemperer) have no English equivalent. The explanations given in parenthesis should therefore only be regarded as an attempt to interpret them. All translations of the source material in this text are by the author. The word Volk which was used so ubiquitously by the National Socialists stands for an “organic unity of people, bound by blood, soil, history and culture” (Steber and Gotto 2014).

  5. This approach is particularly helpful when studying the Third Reich. Without diminishing the responsibility of single perpetrators, it shows how ideology is formed and preserved by “communities of practice.” It was individual as well as collective ‘performances’ that shaped National Socialist identity. See Horan 2013.

  6. Der Deutsche Tierfreund, April/May 1939 9/3: 12.

  7. Berliner Tierärztliche Wochenschrift (henceforth: BTW), April 1937 16: 251.

  8. Senatspräsident Grau, “Die rassische Bedingtheit des deutschen Menschen zum Tierschutz” (“The racial disposition of the German people to animal welfare“). In Reichstierschutzblatt (henceforth: RTB), 1939 1: 2.

  9. RTB, 1938 4: 1.

  10. RTB, 1941 2: 10.

  11. Raschke. “Der Tierschutz und seine Grenzen” (Animal welfare and its limits). In RTB, 1941 3: 1.

  12. Der Deutsche Tierfreund, February/March 1939 9/2: 8.

  13. RTB, 1940 2: 4.

  14. Reinhold Schmaltz, “Reichstierschutzgesetz, Preuß. Tier- und Pflanzenschutzordnung” (Animal welfare law and Prussian animal and plant protection directive). In BTW November 1933 44: 705.

  15. The ideology of the Führerprinzip sees each organization as a hierarchy of leaders, where every leader has absolute responsibility in his own area, demands absolute obedience from those below him, and answers only to his superior. However, as recent studies have shown, National Socialism as a totalitarian system in the sense of a society hierarchically organized from top to bottom has been questioned because of the high degree of consent that the regime enjoyed (Gross 2007). Thus, to say that the decisions made by the veterinary institutions did not reflect the opinion of the profession as a whole would be highly problematic and is indeed unlikely.

  16. BTW, January 1934: 60.

  17. Behnke. “Tierschutz und Tierarzt” (Animal Welfare and the Veterinarian). In DTW, March 1936 11: 212.

  18. Mathieu, “Walther. Lebensmittelüberwachung und Tierschutz” (Food monitoring and animal welfare). In BTW, June 1935 23: 379.

  19. BTW, May 1933 16: 250.

  20. Reichert, K. “Die Tierquälerei im Spiegel des Krieges und die Stellung des Tierarztes in diesen Fragen” (Animal abuse in face of the war and the veterinarians role in it). In Deutsche Tierärztliche Wochenschrift (henceforth: DTW), 1942 45/46: 470.

  21. Behnke, cited above: 212.

  22. RTB, 1940 6: 1.

  23. Schmaltz, Reinhold. “Tierärztliche Beteiligung an Tierschutzvereinen” (Veterinary involvement in animal welfare societies). In Berliner und Münchener Tierärztliche Wochenschrift (henceforth: BMTW), 1941 2: 36.

  24. Schmaltz, “Reichstierschutzgesetz,” cited above: 703.

  25. DTW, April 1933 13: 203.

  26. BTW, March 1937 21: 328.

  27. Der Deutsche Tierfreund, April/May 1939 9/3: 13.

  28. Dr. Behnke, “Tierschutz und Tierarzt” (Animal welfare and the veterinarian). In DTW March 1936 11: 214.

  29. Weber, Friedrich. “Der Tierarzt im Großdeutschen Reich” (The veterinarian in the Great German Reich), cf. W. Sondergeld ed. 1991. Handbuch der akademischen Berufsausbildung, Berlin: 3–5.

  30. Der Deutsche Tierfreund, February/March 1940 10/2: 7.

  31. Scheiber. “Tierarzt und Tierschutz” (Vetenarian and animal welfare). In BTW, 1936 26: 433.

  32. Reichert, cited above: 469.

  33. BTW, 1938 21: 312.

  34. BTW, 1938, 43: 662.

  35. “Kriegsernährungsplan des R. E. M. für den 1.4.1938” (War food plan of the ministry for food). German Federal Archive Berlin R 16/1293: 60.

  36. Koch, W. “Erbbiologisches Denken des Tierarztes” (Biological thinking of the veterinarian). In Deutsches Tierärzteblatt (henceforth: DTB), July 1936 13: 302.

  37. For an overview over the recent discussion of Volksgemeinschaft as a National Socialist leitmotif and its use for historians see Steber/Gotto 2014b.

  38. Anon. „Der Tierschutz in der Kriegszeit “(Animal welfare in times of war). In RTB, 1940 1: 1.

  39. RTB, 1940, 3: 1.

  40. Koch, cited above: 301.

  41. DTB, 1934 1: 3.

  42. BTW, 1934 11: 172.

  43. Dr. Sickmüller, “Gehört der Tierarzt zur Landwirtschaft oder zur Volksgesundheit?” (Does the veterinarian belong to agriculture or public health?). In DTW, July 1933 38: 444.

  44. Koch, cited above: 304.

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  1. History Department, University of Kassel, Nora-Platiel-Str.1, 34127, Kassel, Germany

    Mieke Roscher

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Roscher, M. Veterinary Medicine and Animal Welfare Discourses in the Third Reich. Food ethics 1, 235–245 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-017-0022-4

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