Birds of Prey. Philip W. Blood

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      Compiled from multiple sources filed under NARA, RG242, T77/100/145/301, (OKW WiRu Amt) Reichsforstmeister.

The German hunt was liberalised through laws made in 1848. The laws stimulated middle-class hunting, a social-cultural phenomenon in Germany. This process of culturalization was accelerated by industrial innovation in advanced gun design and manufacturing, mass-produced accoutrements and the mass distribution of cheap popular hunt literature.9 During the Great War, hunting became a symbol of the inherent warrior masculinity of German soldiers. The collapse of monarchy caused an ideological void within the hierarchy of the hunt regardless of the increasing influence of the middle-class. The middle-class hunt was bereft of ideology because of the preponderance of a modus operandi steeped in professionalism. There was a great outpouring of hunt literature after 1848, but there had been no single volume codifying a general hunt etiquette until 1914.10 Raesfeld’s hunting manual was written from a professional standpoint and became the standard reference because he avoided dogma and didn’t offend anyone. Fritz Röhrig, a senior forester on the staff of Greifswald University, later published a cultural history of German hunting with an undisguised national-conservative bias.11 Like most from his profession, the first edition condemned völkisch myths of the Germanen tribes, Germania and the growing desire for ritual from within the hunt. A later edition incorporated a nuanced Nazi narrative. He argued the period immediately after 1848 had led to the endangerment of game, especially the extensive killing of elk, deer and beaver. This was coded language for maligning the middle-class as ‘trophy vultures’. Röhrig however, was hostile towards both dominant social groups of the hunt. He criticised the ‘privileged classes’ (aristocracy) for their irresponsibility in opening the estates to “guest-hunters”. He railed against the middle-class for transforming the hunt into a shooting exercise. The local shooting clubs and rifle associations were also a target of his ire. Röhrig claimed the hunt declined after 1919 partly caused by the alienation of the Jagdjunker (hunting aristocrats) and the vilification of foresters as royalist lackeys. Thus, between Raesfeld and Röhrig, there had been an observable politicisation of the hunt.

Röhrig’s ideological resentment was vented against the Communists with the accusation that they had machine-gunned game as symbols of capitalism. He attacked the societal craze for money where profiteering proliferated and endangered the lives of foresters with a sharp increase in murders. There had been an increase in poaching, and he blamed the complicity of ‘unsavoury characters’ like the Salonjäger (saloon hunters), Schiesser (shooters) or Fleischmacher (meat-makers). Röhrig criticised the ‘red’ press, satirical newspapers and Artfremde (aliens) for lampooning the hunt with cheap and vile satire. He generalised that all postwar periods, throughout history, were disastrous for hunting because unemployed former soldiers turned to poaching and banditry. Poachers had never been tolerated by the hunt. If arrested, the punishments were severe with the loss of an eye or hand, or public execution. His chapters took a racial dimension when he described how Hessen had regulated against Jewish traders by making them swear an oath to report any illegal trade in furs. In Prussia, Jewish traders were forced to purchase certificates to trade furs.12 Röhrig accused Weimar politicians of hypocrisy, patronising the hunt’s feudalism and participating in private hunts, but ridiculing the hunt in parliament. The rising values of wood, forced Weimar governments to improve the lot of state foresters. This brought about improved training and schooling, but the social emphasis had shifted away from the hunt. The decline in the domestic game forced hunters to seek alternatives overseas, in safaris and hunting dangerous game in primaeval habitats.13 Writing after the Nazis were in power, Röhrig congratulated Hitler. He was grateful for the eradication of the “red” menace. The Nazis were the saviours of Germany and Göring had protected both the forest and game. Röhrig called Göring’s 1935 hunting law a “monument in his own lifetime” widening the national and classless appeal of the hunt and realising the goal of harmony with the Volksgemeinschaft.14

Göring as chief of forestry and master of the hunt was responsible for an institution of diverse talents. The first Generalforstmeister of the Reichsforstamt (RFA) was Dr. Walter von Keudell (1884–1973), a long serving Prussian civil servant. He was removed from office in 1937 because he refused to implement Göring’s policy for cutting quotas. He was replaced by Friedrich Alpers (1901–1944), who had studied law at Heidelberg University and became a committed Nazi in 1929. Alpers took an honorary SS officer rank and in 1941 worked on the infamous hunger plan that led to the starvation of millions of people in the east. The Jagdamt (the hunt bureau) was organised as a department within the RFA. The chief of the Jagdamt was Oberjägermeister Ulrich Scherping (1889–1958) who was accountable to Keudell and later Alpers, but in practice reported directly to Göring. Scherping was the architect behind the hunting law and was deeply committed to the process of Nazification. He was born in Pomerania and began a career in the army as a cavalry officer, and like Göring was an early devotee of hunting. During the Great War, his bravery was rewarded and was promoted to the general staff of an infantry division. In August 1915, Scherping arrived in Białowieźa and was left awestruck at the magnitude of the forest. After the war, he joined Freikorps Rossbach at the same time as Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s first deputy.15 Scherping took up a career as a professional hunter and a staff writer for Der Heger (a hunt journal). In 1927, he became general manager of the Deutsche Jagdkammer (German Chamber of Hunting) an organization founded in 1920 and a year later the Reichsjagdbund (National Hunting Union). He gained a reputation as the hunt’s leading political activist and the exponent of right-wing dogma. In 1934 he acquired the title Oberstjägermeister (Colonel of the Hunt) and became Ministerial director of the Jagdamt. The adoption of Oberstjägermeister with its royalist resonance, a rank placed seventh in importance among the two thousand positions in the Kaiser’s royal household, made him a target for lampooning from Nazi rivals of which there were many.16 Scherping clung to Göring in all matters of policy, politics and rivalries, but was astute enough to cosy up to Himmler and serve on his SS personal staff.17

Aldo Leopold, the American naturalist, visited Germany in 1935. He made observations of Göring’s reforms at work and visited Silesia to meet Günther-Hubertus Freiherr von Reibnitz, the Gaujägermeister or Regional Director, with his assistants the Kreisjägermeisters. The meeting was held in a local police station where Reibnitz’s offices were located, which reflected the future of German forestry and the Nazi police state, but Leopold did not report on anti-Semitism.18 Scherping was responsible for the Aryanisation of the hunt. In 1935 the hunt acquired self-policing powers that allowed the implementation of an Aryanised membership base. In 1937 he announced, ‘the hunt had become a closed shop to outsiders and had restored its noble reputation’, and then added that ‘the law had removed anti-social elements that gave hunters a bad name’—he meant the Jews.19 Rules were drafted to define those persons excluded from the hunt as ‘foreigners without German nationality’, which also meant Jews.20 In The Nazi Seizure of Power, Allen discovered that all the local shooting associations were quick to discriminate against Jews, cancelling their memberships once the Nazis came to power.21 Then Nazi hatred for the Jews exploded into violence on 9–10 November 1938, during Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), which led to the arrest of more than 30,000 Jews and more than ninety killed. A few days after the violence subsided Göring hosted a conference of state officials at the Reich Air Ministry. СКАЧАТЬ