Since the mid-nineteenth century, vegetarianism and veganism have attracted public attention and provoked controversial discussions in Europe. The exhibition traces the development of the discourse on vegetarianism in caricatures, satirical drawings and poems that mock the movement, its worldview, social structures, and eating habits. This is from the German version of “Satirical Glimpses of the Cultural History of Vegetarianism.” For the English-language version of this exhibition, click here.

In the nineteenth century, there was much debate about the question of which way of living could be regarded as “natural.” Caricatures on vegetarianism mock ideas of the “natural” relationship between animal and man, and draft utopian as well as dystopian visions of a vegetarian future. This is from the German version of “Satirical Glimpses of the Cultural History of Vegetarianism.” For the English-language version of this exhibition, click here.

In the early phase of the vegetarian movement, satirists playfully imagined how this diet and worldview affected different aspects of culture. Other cartoons make fun of the fact that vegetarianism quickly became a trend that was seen as sign of the Zeitgeist of the 1880s. Surprisingly, they overlooked the fact that vegetarianism was indeed intended as a sociocultural reform that could contribute to social and gender equality. This is from the German version of “Satirical Glimpses of the Cultural History of Vegetarianism.” For the English-language version of this exhibition, click here.

This is Chapter 6 of the exhibition “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: A book that changed the world” by historian Mark Stoll.