Pig murder
The so-called pig murder (also: " Professor slaughter") was a state-ordered mass slaughter of pigs in the German Reich during the First World War .
The slaughter
Before the First World War, 95 percent self-sufficiency with meat was possible in the German Reich . The majority of the cattle consisted of pigs, but for their feeding one had to rely on imported barley from Russia . The total import volume of barley in 1912 was around 2,969,415 tons, the equivalent of 444,213,000 marks.
The beginning of the First World War inevitably led to the end of trade with Russia, which was now an opponent of Germany. Without the barley imports, there was a shortage of feeding the pigs , and the bread supply for the population was also endangered.
The Imperial Statistical Office counted the stock of grain and fodder potatoes in early 1915 . The statistics showed that there were not enough feed stocks for the roughly 25 million German pigs.
The quality of these statistics is questioned in the literature. For fear of confiscation or in order to obtain higher prices, the actual feed stocks were stated by the farmers many times lower than they really were. Since one could make higher profits with meat, the hidden potatoes were fed to the pigs. The fodder potato survey at the end of 1914 therefore underestimated the actual supply.
As the potato and grain stocks required for pig fattening could alternatively be used directly to supply the population, the slaughter of five million pigs was ordered.
An announcement by the Federal Council obliged all municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants to stock up on meat products.
The consequences
Over five million pigs were slaughtered in the first quarter of 1915. A flooding of the market with meat products and a significant fall in prices were the immediate consequences. It looked for preservation forced, but because due to war-related metal lack for food cans are used inferior material had tainted much of the canned meat. However, pork prices rose rapidly in the second half of 1915 due to a severe shortage of cattle for slaughter . A maximum price for pork was therefore set at the end of 1915, which ultimately only led to a black market for pork developing and pork becoming even scarcer on the market.
"Livestock according to the census of December 1, 1916" below:
| year | Horses | Bovine | Sheep | Pigs | Goats | Poultry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1916 | 3,304,168 | 20,873,629 | 4,979,128 | 17.002.401 | 3,940,147 | 65,177,874 |
| 1915 | 3,341,624 | 20,316,948 | 5,073,478 | 17,287,211 | 3,438,296 | not known |
| 1914 | 3,435,283 | 21,828,783 | 5,471,468 | 25.341.272 | 3,538,414 | not known |
| 1913 | not known | 20,994,344 | 5,520,837 | 25,659,140 | 3,548,384 | not known |
Note: The military horses are not included in the horse population figures. So these are exclusively privately owned horses; Usually the draft horses of agriculture.
The killing of millions of pigs was often viewed as a mistake in the planned economy and statistics and was therefore also referred to as the "professor slaughter", since the professors considered the slaughter to be necessary solely on the basis of their theoretical models.
Further use of the term
During the Nazi era , the mass slaughter of 1915 was presented as a plot by Jewish academics, for example in the 1937 book “Der Schweinemord” by “ Reichsbauernführer ” Walther Darré .
In memory of the slaughtering in 1915, the emergency pigs slaughtered in 1951 and 1952 in the GDR were also referred to as pig murder. The five-year plan provided for a significant increase in the number of pigs for both years. Correspondingly, the number of pigs was massively increased. However, since the feed harvest was too small for pig fattening, most of the animals were slaughtered at Christmas 1951 and 1952 before they were ready for slaughter. The Minister for Trade and Supply, Karl Hamann , was made responsible for this .
See also
literature
- Reinhard Güll: The "pig murder" or the "professor slaughter" . In: Statistical monthly magazine Baden-Württemberg . 6/2004, p. 55, online (PDF; 164 kB)
- Dieter Baudis: "From pig murder to swede winter". Side lights on the development of living conditions in Berlin during the First World War (August 1914 to spring 1917) . In: Yearbook for Economic History , special volume 1986: On the economic and social history of Berlin from the 17th century to the present , pp. 129–152, Akademieverlag, online
Web links
- Walter Koch - Head of the Saxon Food Office - food rationing in 1916
- Udo Pollmer: The pig murder of 1915 - When science provoked a famine . Deutschlandradio Kultur, September 25, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ^ Roger Chickering: The German Reich and the First World War , Verlag CH Beck, ISBN 3406475922 , p. 57.
- ↑ Yearbook for Germany's Marine Interests - Nauticus - Sixteenth Year - 1914 - on p. 325.
- ^ The "pig murder" or the "professor slaughter" at the State Statistical Office of Baden-Württemberg
- ↑ Gesine Gerhard: Never again turnips! National Socialist food policy under the sign of the Second World War . In: Ernst Langthaler, Ina Markova (Hrsg.): Agriculture and nutrition in National Socialism . V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8471-0850-4 , pp. 273-292. Footnote 29 on p. 281. ( PDF ; 2.6 MB)
- ↑ "Pig Murder"; in: Spiegel 3/1953 of January 14, 1953, article as a PDF document [1] .