© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved.
The Nature of German Environmental History
Keywords: environment, geography, landscape, nature, ecology, wilderness, conservation
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Scholars of German history, literature and cultural studies have created a long and rich scholarly tradition analysing the adoration of ‘nature’ in German Romantic, nationalist, Heimat, youth, and Lebensreform movements. Political scientists have also produced a voluminous literature on the origins and significance of Germany's Green Party and the ‘post-material’ values of the post-1968 generation. Germany is also well-known for its commitment to sustainable industrial development, as evidenced by one of Europe's best records in recycling, the regulation of industrial emissions and nature conservation. Yet ‘environmental history’, at least this field as understood among its North American practitioners, has remained underdeveloped among German historians until very recently. Franz-Joseph Brüggemeier's pioneering studies of air and water pollution control in the Ruhr area were part of a growing interest in Umweltgeschichte in Germany during the 1980s and early 1990s, but these did not immediately spawn a new generation of imitators. German