172 FRANK UEKÖTTER
laying hens). Factory farming also changed the bodies of these animals:
they were bred systematically for maximum production and the artifi cial
environment of industrial-style pens. Artifi cial insemination has made it
possible to create a multitude of off spring born to selected high-perfor-
mance animals, which has ultimately resulted in the unprecedented ho-
mogenization of the gene pool. Some top-performing bulls, for example,
have produced over a million descendants.^105
Factory farming marks a watershed in the long history of relations be-
tween humans and animals. Farm animals used to be recognized by their
personalities and were given names, but factory farming treated them
as anonymous cogs in a vast machinery: everything that mattered about
these animals could be said in numbers. But perhaps even more shocking
is the silence with which this transformation took place in both East and
West Germany. It came across like a natural trend, devoid of alternatives
or even serious debates. Consumers seemed only to be interested in re-
ducing their grocery bills at fi rst, and farmers had limited options. They
could get bigger, get better, or get out.^106
The industrialization of agricultural production also transformed plant
production, which embraced monoculture in unprecedented fashion. We
can see the result in rows and rows of perfectly manicured corn stretch-
ing far off into the horizon. From the perspective of biodiversity, the post-
war period was a dark era on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Both German
states used excessive amounts of chemical pesticides, and the overuse of
fertilizers led to severe water pollution. From an environmental history
perspective, agricultural history in East and West Germany shows some
remarkable parallels.^107
The twenty-fi rst century will most likely be the fi rst century in the
history of the world in which the majority of the population lives in cit-
ies. Despite all their diff erences, the histories of the GDR and the FRG
were both marked by a dramatic acceleration in urbanization that had
a similar outcome with monumental consequences, namely the end of
the countryside as the defi ning arena of socialization in “Old Europe.”
The implications of this are particularly dramatic within the context of
the history of animals. The line separating livestock from pets, a fl uid
boundary just a hundred years ago, is now a fi rm border in moral and
spatial terms.^108 When a bear crossed the German-Austrian border in the
Alps in 2006, for example, German urbanites found that fears of wild na-
ture left no other option than to shoot what was perceived as a “problem
bear” (Problembär). On the other hand, wolves have migrated peacefully
from Poland to Germany and came as far westward as the Lüneburg
Heath, the gratifying case of a genuine East-West transfer in the unifi ed
Germany.