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Research

Mules were often used to carry loads. Picture: Alp Kiley in the Diemtigtal in 1943.
The milkman Gottfried Moser (left) with farm labourer in front of the dog team of a milk cart going to Zurich in 1892. The dogs pulled the load up to 14 kilometres to Zurich and then the empty cart back to Horgen.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, trams, hackney carriages and freight wagons in cities were pulled by animals. Picture: Zurich station square around 1900.
 

Cultures and Spatial Orders of Working Animals. Foundations for a History of Animal Carrying and Hauling Work

The ARH research project, funded by the SNSF, focuses on questions concerning the numbers, husbandry, breeding and skills of animals doing work, as well as the conditions in which they were working. We are interested in the collaborations of humans and animals in work contexts, in the logics of dealing with living resources, and in the behaviours and working capabilities of animals. These human-animal work contexts gave rise, according to the thesis, to spatial orders and working cultures whose historical reconstruction lies at the heart of the project.

Thematically, we focus on the moving forces of working animals and the contexts of their working contexts. In these, agriculture and the transport industry were often interconnected. Temporally, we focus on the two centuries from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. During this long period, working animals were central actors in the modernisation processes in agriculture and transport. This is also and especially true for the period in which the railways revolutionised transport and agricultural work became increasingly mechanised. Using film sources, we will also explore the question of what roles working animals still played in the second half of the 20th century and how they were perceived in the age of motorisation.

The research project integrates interests of recent agricultural and transport history and human-animal studies with an empirical approach working closely with the source. It contributes to a better understanding of the history of transport and agriculture and is of high social relevance, as current environmental discussions generate a growing need for historical interpretation of the potentials and limits of the use of living resources.

The research project is being carried out in an institutional cooperation between the Archives of Rural History (ARH), the Department of Economic, Social and Environmental History (WSU) at the Institute of History of the University of Bern and ViaStoria, the Foundation for Transport History.

The three-year project (2020-2022) is headed by Peter Moser. The main researcher is the transport historian Hans-Ulrich Schiedt. Andreas Wigger is primarily concerned with the film sources and their indexing and publication. (www.ruralfilms.eu). In April 2024, Chronos will publish the monograph resulting from the project "Auf den Spuren der Arbeitstiere. Eine gemeinsame Geschichte vom ausgehenden 18. bis in die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts".

Publications from the project

Juri Auderset, Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Arbeitstiere. Aspekte animalischer Tradition in der Moderne, in: Traverse, Zeitschrift für Geschichte 2/2021, S. 27-42.

Juri Auderset, Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Die Vermessung des animalischen Motors. Körpergrössen, Zugkraft und Metabolismus der Arbeitstiere, 1800–1950, in: Body Politics, Zeitschrift für Körpergeschichte, 11/15, 2023, S. 57-87.

Juri Auderset, Peter Moser, Hans-Ulrich Schiedt (Hg), Arbeitende Hunde – die Arbeit der Hunde. Eine historische Spurensuche, Bern 2021.

Peter Moser, Grenzen der Komplexitätsreduktion. Überlegungen zu den Versuchen, multifunktionale Tiere in monofunktionale Projektionsflächen zu transformieren, in: Traverse, Zeitschrift für Geschichte 3/2021, S. 139-154.

Peter Moser, Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Arbeitstiere im langen 19. Jahrhundert. Empirische Evidenzen und soziale Kontexte, Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 2021 (in print).

Peter Moser, Andreas Wigger, Arbeitende Tiere. Akteure der Modernisierung sichtbar machen (Working animals. Hidden modernisers made visible), ARH/ERHFA Video Essay No. 1, Bern 2022.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Albert Heim (1849–1937) – eine biografische Skizze, AfA-Working Paper Nr. 02, Archiv für Agrargeschichte, Bern 2021.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Arbeitende Hunde – die Arbeit der Hunde, in: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Kynologischen Gesellschaft SKG 3/2022, S. 14-16.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Auf den Spuren der Arbeitstiere. Eine gemeinsame Geschichte vom ausgehenden 18. bis in die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Zürich 2024 (in print).

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Bastarden – Hybriden – Gebrauchskreuzung. Die Geschichte der Maultiere im 19. und in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, AfA‐Working Paper Nr. 03, Archiv für Agrargeschichte, Bern 2022.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Geschichte der Arbeitspferde von der zweiten Hälfte des 18. bis in die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, AfA-Working Paper Nr. 06, Bern 2023.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Geschichte der Arbeitsrinder von der zweiten Hälfte des 18. bis in die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, AfA-Working Paper Nr. 07, Bern 2023.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Langohr, Grautier, hat vier Zeichen, AfA‐Working Paper Nr. 04, Archiv für Agrargeschichte, Bern 2022.

Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, Zughunde und ihre Arbeitswelt im 19. und im frühen 20. Jahrhundert, AfA‐Working Paper Nr. 01, Archiv für Agrargeschichte, Bern 2021.

Andreas Wigger, Bewegende Tiere auf bewegten Bildern. Filme als Quellen und Vermittlungsformat zur Geschichte der arbeitenden Tiere in der Zeit der Massenmotorisierung (1950-1980), Masterarbeit, Fribourg 2023.