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
In April of 1931—or, according to the official calendar of Mussolini’s regime, year IX of the Fascist era—Francesco Maiocco, the head of the National Institute of Rabbit Breeding (Istituto Nazionale de Coniglicoltura) in Alessandria, presented to the Ministry of Agriculture a detailed account of Italy’s production of rabbit pelts.[81] In the previous years the institute had been developing standards of body weight and pelt quality to put rabbit producers and pelt merchants in accordance with one another. Maiocco made his best effort to offer dignity to the modest object of research of his institution, reminding the Minister of Agriculture that the city of Milan alone consumed at least 25,000 rabbits every week and that Florence needed a supply of about a million rabbits per year. In a country engaged in a battle for self-sufficiency that would only become harsher in subsequent years, rabbits, according to Maiocco, could become an important resource, supplying the flourishing national fashion market and at the same time reducing the importing of meat. Such reasoning was well attuned to Mussolini’s vision of Italy as an autarkic economy.[82]
By the end of the 1930s, the Istituto Nazionale de Coniglicoltura had established formal relations with about 6,000 rabbit growers, forming numerous local breeding rings whose statutes Maiocco also designed.[83] Maiocco worked closely with the Fascist organization Dopolavoro. Mobilizing what he called the “breeders and friends of rabbits” was not easy, for it was a highly dispersed group of small growers located mainly in the suburbs of major Italian cities, feeding the animals produce from their home vegetable gardens. Only through the mass organizations of the regime run by women was it possible to imagine reaching this diffuse population and standardizing breeding practices.[84]
Eight years later, in 1939, Maiocco welcomed the Ministry of Agriculture to Alessandria once more. This time he was joined by Mussolini.[85] Maiocco boasted again of the great work of his institute in contributing to the yearly Italian production of 50 million rabbits, for which he received the praise of the Duce, along with 400,000 extra lira for his research work. In exchange for the donation, Mussolini demanded that production be doubled to 100 million rabbits in order to contribute to the national autarky effort, which had been greatly intensified since the Ethiopian campaign of 1935–36. Maiocco apparently made promises concerning a new fur animal developed by the institute: Karakul sheep. The pledge now was that mass production of Karakul would cover the needs of the Milan fashion industry, which consumed approximately 200,000–300,000 Persian furs from central Asia and South West Africa, purchased in the two big world markets of London and Leipzig, thus saving Italy an appreciable amount of foreign currency. Maiocco offered Mussolini a Karakul lamb from his institute’s herd.[86] The Istituto Nazionale de Coniglicoltura, following the example of Halle, was fashioning itself as a center of Karakul circulation, supplying pureblood rams and ewes to the brave Italian settlers in the Italian colonies of North Africa (Libya) and East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia).
But before we explore the circuit from Italy to Africa, we have to understand how Maiocco was able to form his pureblood Karakul flock in Alessandria. His interest in Karakul had first been raised by a visit at the end of 1930 to a pelt fair in Leipzig, where he saw Persian furs exhibited by Thorer’s company. More important, in March of the next year, the Halle Animal Breeding Institute brought to the twelfth Milan Pelt Fair a small group of Karakul sheep, a picture of which was featured on the front page of the April issue of Coniglicoltura (Rabbit Breeding), a journal edited by the Istituto Nazionale de Coniglicoltura.[87] Although a few private farmers in Italy had already imported Karakul rams from several European countries, the non-systematic nature of these efforts drove Maiocco to try to emulate the Halle example and seize the opportunity to launch Karakul production in Italy on a large scale through standards and methods established by his own institute. More than just offering a traditional extension service to farmers, he designed a research program concerning acclimation and the crossing of Karakul rams with local breeds. Following the German model, he also established a register to be managed by the Ministry of Agriculture or, alternatively, by the Istituto Nazionale de Coniglicoltura.
80
If before Hitler’s seizure of power Germany had been the first destination of South West Africa pelts, the situation would drastically change with the limitations on imports imposed by the Nazi regime. In the second half of the 1930s, London and New York would replace Leipzig as main markets for furs of South West Africa origin. See Krogh, “Economic aspects of the Karakul industry.”
81
Francesco Maiocco, “Coniglicoltura e allevamento animali da pelliccia al Consiglio Zootecnico,”
82
For general discussions of the political economy of the Italian fascist regime, see Domenico Petri,
83
Francesco Maiocco,” “I circoli di allevamento,”
84
“Sul piano straordinario di azione a favore della coniglicoltura,”
87
“Per l’allevamento Karakul in Italia,”