Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

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Format: 1 online resource (276 p.)

ISBN: 9780813537702

Content: Germany boasts one of the strongest environmental records in the world. The Rhine River is cleaner than it has been in decades, recycling is considered a civic duty, and German manufacturers of pollution-control technology export their products around the globe. Yet, little has been written about the country's remarkable environmental history, and even less of that research is available in English. Now for the first time, a survey of the country's natural and cultural landscapes is available in one volume. Essays by leading scholars of history, geography, and the social sciences move beyond the Green movement to uncover the enduring yet ever-changing cultural patterns, social institutions, and geographic factors that have sustained Germany's relationship to its land. Unlike the American environmental movement, which is still dominated by debates about wilderness conservation and the retention of untouched spaces, discussions of the German landscape have long recognized human impact as part of the "natural order." Drawing on a variety of sites as examples, including forests, waterways, the Autobahn, and natural history museums, the essays demonstrate how environmental debates in Germany have generally centered on the best ways to harmonize human priorities and organic order, rather than on attempts to reify wilderness as a place to escape from industrial society. Germany's Nature is essential reading for students and professionals working in the fields of environmental studies, European history, and the history of science and technology.

Note: Frontmatter -- , Contents -- , Acknowledgments -- , Introduction: The Landscape of German Environmental History -- , Chapter 1. Germany as a Focus of European “Particularities” in Environmental History -- , Chapter 2. Conviction and Constraint: Hydraulic Engineers and Agricultural Amelioration Projects in Nineteenth-Century Prussia -- , Chapter 3. A Sylvan People: Wilhelmine Forestry and the Forest as a Symbol of Germandom -- , Chapter 4. Forestry and the German Imperial Imagination: Conflicts over Forest Use in German East Africa -- , Chapter 5. Organic Machines: Cars, Drivers, and Nature from Imperial to Nazi Germany -- , Chapter 6. Biology—Heimat—Family: Nature and Gender in German Natural History Museums around 1900 -- , Chapter 7. Indication and Identification: On the History of Bird Protection in Germany, 1800–1918 -- , Chapter 8. Protecting Nature between Democracy and Dictatorship: The Changing Ideology of the Bourgeois Conservationist Movement, 1925–1935 -- , Chapter 9. Protecting Nature in a Divided Nation: Conservation in the Two Germanys, 1945–1972 -- , Notes on Editors and Contributors -- , Index , In English.

Language: English

Subjects: General works

DOI: 10.36019/9780813537702

URL: https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780813537702

URL: https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780813537702

URL: Volltext  (lizenzpflichtig)