"This collection offers substantial contributions to debates about Germany's modernity and the continuities of its modern history from a field that has not been amply represented among Germanists, but deserves to find its place among comparative and cultural approaches to German history."-Susan A. Crane, University of Arizona

"This anthology captures the history of German nature protection and conservation with great skill and clarity. It should be read by everyone interested in modern Europe and the rise of Green politics."-Mark Cioc, author of The Rhine: An Eco-Biography

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.

Contributors:
Sandra Chaney
Rita Gudermann
Michael Imort
Rudy Koshar
Susanne Kstering
Thomas Lekan
Joachim Radkau
Friedemann Schmoll
Thaddeus Sunseri
John Alexander Williams
Thomas Zeller

Thomas Lekan is an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Thomas Zeller is an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
"The Landscape of German Environmental History"
Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller
Part I: Seeing Like a State: Water, Forests, and Power
1. "Germany as a Focus of European 'Peculiarities' in Environmental History"
Joachim Radkau
2. "Conviction and Constraint: Hydraulic Engineers and Amelioration Projects in Nineteenth-Century Prussia"
Rita Gudermann
3. "A Sylvan People: Wilhelmine Forestry and the Forest as a Symbol of Germandom"
Michael Imort
4. "Forestry and the German Imperial Imagination: Conflicts over Forest Use in German East Africa"
Thaddeus Sunseri
Part II: The Cultural Landscapes of Home
5. "Organic Machines: Cars, Drivers, and Nature from Imperial to Nazi Germany"
Rudy Koshar
6. "Biology - Heimat - Family: Nature and Gender in German Natural History Museums around 1900"
Susanne K"stering
Part III: The Politics of Conservation
7. "Indication and Identification: On the History of Bird Protection"
Friedemann Schmoll
8. "Protecting Nature Between Democracy and Dictatorship: The Changing Ideology of the Bourgeois Conservationist Movement, 1925-1935"
John Alexander Williams
9. "Protecting Nature in a Divided Nation: Conservation in the Two Germanys, 1945-1972"
Sandra Chaney
Index