In 1886, the National Association of Animal Protection Societies petitioned the German Reichstag to protest “the deplorable state of affairs surrounding the method of slaughtering, the role of the butcher, and finally the demoralizing effect that the sight of this albeit necessary killing of livestock must have, particularly on the youth.” Calling for a nationwide law to prohibit the killing of livestock without prior stunning, animal protectionists insisted that only nationwide state intervention could alleviate the widespread problems with slaughter, which, by extension, would guarantee the advancement of humanity. Yet, butchers and Jewish communities vehemently disagreed and in more than two thousand counterpetitions, they appealed to the Reichstag to refrain from proposing such a law. Why did a relatively minor issue like the slaughter of livestock spark so much controversy, and, more importantly, why did it become such a politicized agenda when it was deliberated in the Reichstag in 1887 and again in 1899?

After reading the “Jewish News Bulletin” (Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt) in early 1939, the Romance language scholar Victor Klemperer wrote: “Until 1933 and for at least a good century before that, the German Jews were entirely German and nothing else … They were and remain (even if now they no longer wish to remain so) Germans …” Klemperer, a convert to Protestantism, but a “full Jew” by Nazi decree, continued, “It is part of the Lingua tertii imperii [LTI, language of the Third Reich] that the expression ‘Jewish people’ [Volk] appears repeatedly in the ‘Jewish News'…”