Innocent’s head protrudes from the wall of the court restaurant in the Upper Harz. The fur shimmers reddish brown. “He was our best breeding bull,” says farmer Julia Thielecke. On the day of her high school exams, she helped him into the world. A difficult birth, because Innocent was already great back then. Twelve years and 500 descendants later, Thielecke accompanied him into the slaughter room. They would have let him grow old as a stone. But the joints. Because he didn’t fit into the killing box, the farmer’s wife held him by the halter until the end. “My Innocent,” she says when she talks about it.
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