On Saturday December 13. the final excursion of our film and workshop on the topic of well-being took place. Following the film Butenland, the focus at the ‘Gnadenhöfle’ Müllheim-Dattingen was on the welfare of animals that are often only regarded as livestock by law and society.
As part of VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY, a guided tour of the ‘Gnadenhöfle’ animal sanctuary in Müllheim-Dattingen took place in December. The excursion followed on from our screening of Marc Pierschel’s film Butenland, which introduces the animal sanctuary of the same name. On a tour of the Gnadenhöfle led by Patrick Ohme, participants had the opportunity to get to know this farm near Freiburg, its history and, of course, the animals that live there. After the tour, they were able to enjoy the end of their afternoon with mulled wine and vegan soup at the farm’s so-called ‘Adventsglühen’.
Horses, various types of chickens, turkeys, geese, donkeys, pigs, cattle, goats and sheep call the farm their home. In summer, they have large pastures to roam. In winter, the animals live in stables with spacious paddocks and pastures where they can move around freely – the horses also have access to a paddock trail where they can cover several kilometres a day. For their protection, the enclosures for the chickens, turkeys and geese are secured against foxes with wired fences.
For Patrick Ohme and Rebecca Benz, who run the farm, the sanctuary is above all a labour of love – they both work full-time in other jobs and then go to work on the farm to take care of the tasks there. They do not earn any money from the sanctuary – on the contrary, the farm relies on donations and sponsorships to cover feed and veterinary costs. And when it comes to maintaining the farm, the two are actively supported by other association members and volunteers. The fact that the system in Germany is not really meant for animal sanctuaries is also evident in how expensive veterinary costs are. The cost of an operation on the four-year-old mare Angel recently cost the farm a five-figure sum, which would have been impossible to cover without numerous donations.
But society’s view of the sanctuary also shows something else: many people care deeply for animal welfare! Every day, the sanctuary receives enquiries about whether it can take in more animals, including from farmers who no longer want to send so many animals to their deaths. Unfortunately, the sanctuary has to turn down most of these enquiries due to capacity reasons. The many visitors at the ‘Adventsglühen’ and farm tours also clearly demonstrate that people care about so-called ‘livestock’ in Germany being able to have a good life without fear of torture and death. The Gnadenhöfle thus captures the desire of many people for a better life for all living beings, even if the operators have to actively work against the structures of the profit-oriented agricultural industry to achieve this.
This event was part of VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY, an inter- and transdisciplinary research project funded by the Innovation Sustainability Campus (ICN), located at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Non-university cooperation partners include Harmonie Kino, the Volkshochschule Freiburg and Greenmotions. The Freiburg environmental mayor Christine Buchheit has taken on the patronage of the project.