From “Nazi Cows” to Cosmopolitan “Ecological Engineers”: Specifying Rewilding Through a History of Heck Cattle

Abstract

Rewilding has become a hot topic in nature conservation. Ambitious schemes are afoot to rewild continental Europe and North America. Hopes are being invested in the political, economic, and therapeutic potentials of future wilds. Popular and scientific enthusiasms for the wild are frequently ahistorical and apolitical, however. This article begins to address this problem. It offers one genealogy of rewilding, focusing on a history of Heck cattle and their deployment in European rewilding projects. These animals were back-bred by two German zoologists in the 1930s, with Nazi patronage, for release as hunting prey in the annexed territories of Eastern Europe. Some cattle survived the war and their offspring have become prominent, alongside new back-breeding initiatives, in contemporary efforts to rewild a unifying Europe. Cattle now figure as cosmopolitan ecological engineers, whose grazing will create functional, wild landscapes. This genealogy examines what and where is understood to be wild and who is authorized to make such decisions in this story. Drawing cautiously on this extreme example, it examines historic rewilding as a form of reactionary modernism. It critically traces the emergence, persistence, and transformation of various ontologies, geographies, and epistemologies of wildness in Europe to position contemporary rewilding as a mode of ecomodernism. When compared, rewilding under Nazi rule and in the contemporary European Union are found to be different in every relevant problematic respect. Reflecting on differing conceptions of what it means to be modern helps specify a multiplicity of rewildings past and present. The article concludes with a set of criteria for discriminating among rewildings to inform the emergence and analysis of this conservation paradigm.

再荒野化已成为自然保育中炙手可热的主题。再荒野化欧洲大陆与北美的宏大计画正在进行, 人们并对未来荒野的政治、经济与疗癒潜能投以诸多期待。但大众与科学对荒野的热忱, 却经常是去历史与去政治的。本文着手处理此一问题, 提供再荒野化的一个系谱学, 并聚焦海克牛 (heck cattle) 之历史, 及其在欧洲的再荒野化计画中的部署。这些动物是 1930 年代两位德国动物学家回交育种的产物, 并受到纳粹所资助, 用以放养作为在东欧併吞的领土上的猎物。部分的牛隻在战火中倖存, 而其子嗣则随着崭新的回交育种计画, 在当代再荒野化统一的欧洲之努力中颇富盛名。牛隻现在被认为是世界生态的工程师, 而其牧场将能创造具功能性的荒野地景。本系谱学检视此一故事中, 何物及何处被理解为 “荒野”, 以及什麽人被授权来进行此般决策。本文谨慎地运用此一极端案例, 检视历史中的再荒野化, 作为反动的现代主义之形式。本文批判性地追溯欧洲对于荒野的各种本体论、地理与认识论的兴起、续存与变迁, 以将当代的再荒野化置放作为生态现代主义的一种模式。相较之下, 纳粹统治下与当代欧盟的再荒野化, 在各个相关的问题意识面向中皆有所不同。反思现代意义为何的差异化概念, 有助于具体说明再荒野化的过去与当下的多重性。本文于结论中提出一组区辨再荒野化的准则, 以告知此一保育模式的浮现与分析。

El retorno a lo silvestre [rewilding] se ha convertido en un tópico caliente relacionado con la conservación de la naturaleza. Varios diseños ambiciosos para aplicar este tipo de conservación se hallan en marcha en la Europa continental y en América del Norte. Se está invirtiendo esperanza en el potencial político, económico y terapéutico que pueda derivarse de futuros entornos silvestres. Sin embargo, los entusiasmos populares y científicos por la naturaleza silvestre son con frecuencia ahistóricos y apolíticos. Este artículo empieza a ocuparse de este problema. En este escrito se presenta una genealogía del retorno a lo silvestre, centrada en una historia del ganado Heck y su despliegue entre los proyectos europeos al respecto. La recuperación y crianza de estos animales se intentó en los años 1930 por dos zoólogos alemanes, con patrocinio nazi, para usarlos como presas de caza en los campos silvestres de territorios recién anexados en Europa Oriental. Algunos de estos ganados sobrevivieron a la guerra y su descendencia ha llegado a ser prominente, junto con nuevas iniciativas de crianza regresiva, en los esfuerzos contemporáneos por recuperar lo silvestre en una Europa unificada. Al ganado se le asigna ahora el papel de ingenieros ecológicos cosmopolitas cuyo pastoreo dará lugar a paisajes silvestres funcionales. Esta genealogía examina qué y dónde está lo que en esta historia debe entenderse como silvestre, y quién está autorizado para tomar decisiones en esta historia. Basándose cautelosamente en este ejemplo extremo, la genealogía examina el retorno a lo silvestre histórico como una forma de modernismo reaccionario. Críticamente traza la aparición, persistencia y transformación de varias ontologías, geografías y epistemologías de lo salvaje o prístino en Europa para posicionar el retorno a lo silvestre como un modo de ecomodernismo. Al comparar el repoblamiento silvestre bajo normas nazis con el retorno a lo silvestre contemporáneo de la Unión Europea se nota que son diferentes en cualquier respecto problemático relevante. Reflexionando sobre las diferentes concepciones de lo que significa ser moderno ayuda a especificar una multiplicidad de retornos a lo silvestre, pasados y presentes. El artículo termina con un conjunto de criterios para discriminar entre los retornos a lo silvestre para informar sobre la aparición y análisis de este paradigma conservacionista.

Key Words:

• biopolitics
• geopolitics
• National Socialism
• nature conservation
• rewilding

关键词：:

• 生命政治
• 地缘政治
• 国家社会主义
• 自然保育
• 再荒野化。

Palabras clave:

• biopolítica
• geopolítica
• Nacional Socialismo
• conservación de la naturaleza
• retorno a lo silvestre

Acknowledgments

An early version of this article was first presented at a session on Nazi geographies at the Association of American Geographers conference in Seattle in April 2011. We would like to thank Claudio Minca, Trevor Barnes, and other session participants for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank the three referees and the editor for some excellent instruction.

Funding

This research was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes

1 Derek Gow runs the West Country Wild Life Photography Centre (WCWPC), which “offers the opportunity to photograph or film a splendid collection of captive British mammals in highly naturalistic settings” (WCWPC 2015). He is also a leading expert in water vole reintroduction and keen advocate for the return of beavers to the United Kingdom. He breeds captive populations of these and other animals.

2 An abbreviated online version of the original article can be found at www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Westcountry-farm-home-German-super-cows/story-11424807-detail/story.html.

3 We take the concept of genealogy from Foucault (1977), for whom, as Elden (2009) explained, it constitutes “a mode of historical enquiry that seeks to trace the emergence and descent of terms and categories (and we would add materials and practices), and the interrelation of power and knowledge in their deployment” (270). We are not so much interested in the origins of the term rewilding (and its synonyms and correlates) as in providing a history of their present use and reflections on their future possibilities.

4 Latour used the term reactionary in an unpublished piece commentating on Nordhaus and Schell-enberger's book Breakthrough (Latour 2007, 7). A condensed version, without the term reactionary, is found in Latour (2011). In a further essay (Latour 2010), he cautioned against the term reactionary and the linear model of time, progress, and critique it implies. Latour (2015) has more recently sought to distance himself from ecomodernism, as it is put forward by the Breakthrough Institute.

5 The archives at Berlin Zoo are private and we were not able to gain access. They might contain further relevant information regarding Lutz's breeding program and his associations with National Socialism.

6 This reputation owes something perhaps to their depiction in Tournier's (2000) novel The Ogre. Tournier apparently based his literary rendition of rampant back-bred aurochsen and the extravagant eccentricities of Goering's hunting in the Rominter Heide forest on the memoirs of his head forester Walter Frevert (1962).

7 For more information on Rewilding Europe, see www.rewildingeurope.com.

8 For more information on the Uruz project and their plans for aurochs deextinction, see www.truenaturefoundation.org.

9 Both Lutz's approach to wisent conservation breeding and the “aurochs” back-breeding projects were scorned before and after the war by critical colleagues for their lack of purity (see, e.g., Mohr 1939).

10 It is unclear whether Lorenz actually used the images. See SBBPK (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz), NL 137/27: Oskar Heinroth correspondence, Konrad Lorenz, letter Heinroth to Lorenz 6-2-1939; Lorenz to Heinroth, 19-2-1937.

11 The ideological leanings of Heinz Heck seem to have been even more complicated and were subject to intensive and protracted investigation by the Nazi authorities (Driessen and Lorimer 2016). See BundesArchiv NS 15/138, 18–31; BArch PK E38, 2845–2916; BArch NS 15/138, 31; BArch PK E38 p. 2862, cfr. 2912.

12 Wagner also took up this legend in his Ring des Nibelungen. The notion of Nibelungentreue (Nibelungen loyalty)—the total dedication to fight until the last man—was used by Goering in addressing the Wehrmacht just before the collapse of Stalingrad.

13 The RKFDV (Reichskommissariat für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums) was the authority headed by Himmler and charged with populating the east with people of proper Aryan descent.

14 BArch NS 21/G120, 1071ff., 1111ff.

15 See, for example, The New Wilderness (Smit and Verkerk 2013), a blue-chip wildlife documentary about the OVP released in 2013 (www.thenewwilderness.com/).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jamie Lorimer

JAMIE LORIMER is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK OX1 3QY. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include the politics of science in relation to wildlife conservation, the Anthropocene, animal geographies, and the human microbiome.

Clemens Driessen

CLEMENS DRIESSEN is a lecturer in the Cultural Geography chairgroup at Wageningen University, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]. He has worked on the cultural and technological lives of animals (both in the wild and on farms), while seeking to explore shifting human–animal relations through creative and technological design.