Introduction : Nature and nation in transatlantic perspective / Christof Mauch -- "Conquests from barbarism" : taming nature in Frederick the Great's Prussia / David Blackbourn -- The political ecology of the Rhine / Marc Cioc -- Landscape as history : Pückler-Muskau, the "green prince" of Germany / Linda Parshall -- All of Germany a garden? Changing ideas of wilderness in German garden design and landscape architecture / Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn -- For nation and prosperity, health and a green environment : protecting nature in West Germany, 1945-1970 / Sandra Chaney -- Waldsterben : the construction and deconstruction of an environmental problem / Franz-Josef Brüggemeier
Summary
"The essays collected in this volume - the first collection on the subject in either English or German - place discussions of nature and the human relationship with nature in their political contexts. Taken together, they trace the gradual shift from a confident belief in humanity's ability to tame and manipulate the natural realm to the Umweltbewusstsein driving the contemporary conservation movement. Nature in German History also documents efforts to reshape the natural realm in keeping with ideological beliefs - such as the Romantic exultation of 'the wild' and the Nazis' attempts to eliminate 'foreign' flora and fauna - as well as the ways in which political issues have repeatedly been transformed into discussions of the environment in Germany."--Jacket
