2 - Ideas: Diverse Roots and a Common Cause

Summary

What are the intellectual roots of German conservation? For Schoenichen, the former head of the Prussian Agency for the Protection of National Monuments, the answer was simple: “The idea of conservation is essentially an outgrowth of romanticism,” he wrote in his overview of German conservation published in 1954. Today's historians will need to provide a more complex answer. Schoenichen was right in his emphasis that the idea of conservation was indeed much older than the organized conservation movement that arose around 1900, but romanticism was only one of multiple strands that defined thinking on conservation issues in Germany. In fact, it is a matter of debate whether there was actually a clearly defined philosophy of nature protection in Germany at any time, and especially during the first decades of conservation history. During the nineteenth century, conservation was a sentiment rather than a social movement, and its key proponents were often freelance authors who showed little interest in molding their ideas into a clear political agenda, let alone formal organizations. The best-known example was Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, whose 1854 book Naturgeschichte des Volkes (“Natural History of the German People”) celebrated rural life, the German forests, and a natural “right to wilderness.” However, the book, based mostly on Riehl's personal experiences while traveling through Germany's regions, was much more than a treatise on conservation: it put forward a harmonious ideal of social relations, with nature being a harbinger of peace, and key concepts, such as modesty and honor, revealed Riehl's longing for an idealized premodern society.