History of the Development of Natural Resource Management Practices in Germany and their Relationship to Such Practices in the US

            German history encompasses a rich tapestry of progressively expanding knowledge of, philosophy toward, and management of natural resources.  Beginning in the Middle Ages, it was seen as a divine duty to tame the land for human settlement.  However, with the gradual realization of the loss of natural resources and the need to better protect them, Germany has undergone major changes in its natural resource policies throughout history- changes which have often placed it at the global forefront of progress in environmental research and policy.   Many of the realities facing Germany in coming to terms with a limited and diminishing supply natural resources coupled with a growing population, were (and still are) shared with the United States; In fact, the United States has especially benefited from the cutting-edge forestry research originating from Germany over the decades, along with the experience gained from some of Germany’s mistakes.  For a variety of reasons, including a deeper, longer cultural history between the people and the land, along with a greater population density which forced them to make difficult resource management decisions starting at an earlier time, Germany has always seemed a step ahead of the United States; This trend began with the initial realization of the need for sustainable use of resources, and has continued all the way up through modern times with the rise of the Green political movement in Germany.

General Ecological History of Germany

Long before Germany developed into a unified nation and all the way up until the middle of the 19^th century, natural resources were considered the property of wealthy landowners and nobility, rather than belonging to the public.  The nobility alone dictated the harvest of game, fish and timber within their regions of power- an example of which was the feudal Jagdrecht, which up until the revolt of the bourgeois against the upper-classes in 1848, allowed nobles to hunt on any private landowner’s property (Plochmann 54).  This presence of a managerial authority did not, however, hinder the loss of forests, as the removal of trees to make way for agriculture was viewed as a noble act and even a religious duty during the Middle Ages, and kingdoms were happy to allow their subjects to reclaim wild lands for crops (Simmons 172).  Thus, when the region eventually stabilized, many of the autonomous German states inevitably recognized the need for strengthened resource management policies to deal with the near total loss of primitive wilderness to agriculture, evidenced as early as 1836, for example, with the establishment of the first Naturschutzgebiet in the Siebengebirge south of Bonn (umweltgeschichte.de).

While there were, of course, limited issues addressed by individual German states prior to the Second Reich (1871- 1918), they were mainly the result of forward-looking individuals in the upper classes, or forestry specialists who foresaw the need for conservation and preservation of natural resources.  In the early 20^th century, during the rule of Emperor Wilhelm II, environmentalism began establishing itself as a bourgeois movement in Germany.  One of the most notable pioneers of encouraging state-sponsored conservation via a strong public interest (coined the Naturschutz movement by environmentalist Ernst Rudorff in 1888) was a botanist by the name of Hugo Conwentz.  In 1904, the same year he was appointed to head the newly created Staatliche Stelle für Naturdenkmalpflege, Conwentz wrote, “Not only here in Prussia, but in almost any cultured country, one has come to the conclusion that something must happen immediately in order to prevent the complete destruction of primordial nature.” (Dominick 3).  The Naturschutz movement was a reaction to what Conwentz and his contemporaries viewed as the “major mismanagement” of natural resources during the Second Reich involving the damming and straightening of rivers; severe air pollution in the areas surrounding industrial centers (especially in the Ruhr region), which in turn decimated the surrounding plant life; rampant urban sprawl; and the near loss of once common species of animals while others were even driven to extinction (Dominick 3).  With the success of the Naturschutz effort in forcing environmental protection forward as an issue of public concern in Germany, natural resource management was bolstered under strengthened centralized control.  Eventually, the Naturschutz movement helped lead to the formation of the first Nationalpark (established in the Lüneburger Heide in 1921), followed by ground-breaking legislation to preserve forest stands, and laws protecting water, air and soil quality in 1923 (Schrul).

The fundamental socialist ideals of the Nazi party during the Third Reich (1933- 1945) seemed on the surface to lend themselves well to the Naturschutz movement, with both sharing values of a pastoral, rural countryside dominated by traditional values, anti-materialism, and the sentiment of a folk bound by their blood to the soil.  Adolf Hitler’s personal ambitions, however, were in practice quite detrimental to the quality of Germany’s environment (Raymond 93).  The NS administration depleted natural resources at a staggering rate with its industrial modernization, and increased levels of production and construction, all while mobilizing toward their envisioned military conquest of Europe.  The greatly increased resource use is reflected in the 136% increase in timber harvest in 1936, followed by a 152% increase in 1937 and a 161% increase in 1938 over the years leading up to World War II (Rubner, Deutsche Forstgeschichte 95).  These facts did not, however, prevent Hitler from wooing the Naturschutz community with the words they wanted to hear, proclaiming in 1933 the importance of preserving the German landscape: “Die deutsche Landschaft muß unter allen Umständen erhalten bleiben, denn sie ist und war schon von jeher die Quelle der Kraft und Stärke unseres Volkes,” (Rubner, Deutsche Forstgeschichte 82).

One of the major figures responsible for reinvigorating the environmental functions of Germany’s government after being left in shambles by World War II, was Dr. Hans Klose.  Even though he had worked directly for the Nazi government as their head of the Imperial Conservation Office, there was no evidence that he ever formally joined the Nazi party himself, and was therefore spared from the war tribunal and asked to continue his function for the new government in 1945.  Not only were his efforts limited to helping build conservation measures into the new government of postwar Germany, but he also worked hard to reinvigorate private environmental clubs and organizations, the number of which had dwindled to less than half of their 1940 level during the war (Dominick 120).  As dedicated as conservationists such as Dr. Klose may have been however, the issue of maintaining a healthy ecology in Germany was often forgotten in the face of the importance of economic reconstruction to the nation.  Many tragedies took place, such as the damming of the upper Isar River for hydroelectric power, which resulted in the horrible decay of the surrounding ecosystem.  While the Wirtschaftswunder experienced by Germany following World War II was of tremendous benefit to the population, which had suffered in so many ways under Nazi rule, it was also one of the worst times for the German environment.  Despite a strong public concern for the environment, it was difficult to slow the industrial apparatus that had taken hold over the country when it was propelling the nation’s economy out of the hole with such dramatic results.

In the early eighties, a new force began to dominate the forefront of German environmentalism with the Green Party, which joined the Bundestag in 1983 with 27 newly elected members who helped give the German environmental movement its new modern face and push environmental responsibility forward as a priority issue in the government.  The Green Party was as much a political organization as it is a grass-roots social movement, founded on principles not only of environmental stewardship and ecology, but also on social equality and feminism (Spretnak 108).  The Green Party enjoyed nearly a decade of success, when once again the environment was sidelined for the economy, this time with the intense economic stress caused by the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.  Environmental policy sat on the back burner while the newly reunited German government struggled to absorb the monstrous fiscal and logistical burden associated with the incorporation of a backward third-world Soviet state into the West, which had been a modern world leader setting the economic standards for all of Europe.  The Green Party suffered significant losses of votes during the first 3 years following reunification, as people were understandably concerned about joblessness and financial security in the face of this new political development.  The hurtle was overcome approximately three years following reunification with strategic decision by the Green Party in 1993 to unite with Bündnis 90, an East German party founded on principles of human rights (Doyle 120).

As of the past 5 years, the Bündnis 90/Greens have increased their influence on German politics with the appointment of a Green, Joschka Fischer, to the positions of Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor in 1998, making him the most powerful and influential Green politician yet.

German Forest Management History

            Germany was the pioneering contributor to the science of modern forestry, a position it attained primarily as a consequence of dwindling forestlands becoming a major national concern beginning in the late 18^th century.  The serious degradation of Germany’s woodland resources spawned the formation of scientific institutes to study the management options pertaining to Germany’s remaining forests.  The first school of forestry, the Aschaffenburger Forstlehrinstitut, was founded in 1807, in the kingdom of Bavaria (Dominick 9).  As railroads began expanding throughout the developing nation, so too did the consumption of massive amounts of wood for railroad ties and locomotive fuel toward the latter half of the 19^th century.  As Germany began to run thin on forest resources- to the point of being forced to import a large share of its timber commodities from foreign sources- management practices were implemented to gain as much wood as possible from Germany’s forests in a manner that would be sustainable over time.  Around the mid-19^th century, the new forestry mentality was sufficiently entrenched in the psyche of managers that irresponsible practices such as clear-cutting or the planting of monocultures (single-species forests) were largely condemned.  Any time someone employed such practices, it was characterized as a Raubwirtschaft, a business built on theft… namely the theft of the forest from the German people (Dominick 9).

            Though Germany was the innovator of modern forestry, being the first to succeed also meant having to learn from the inevitable mistakes of a pioneer.  One of the major blunders of forestry was that in an effort to gain the greatest possible yield from a forest over the longest time, forests were often re-seeded with spruce and pine, which were faster-growing than the oak and beech trees that dominated the landscape in the 18^th century, thus completely reshaping the country’s ecological composition from its primitive state (Rubner, Frühe Konzeptionen 4).

Additionally, until recent times, the primary goal of German forestry was to harvest the most wood possible over the longest period of time for human consumption.  The so-called Schlagwaldwirtschaft often employed by timber harvesters relied on a rotating schedule, wherein, for example, each year the oldest thirtieth of a particular woodland would be harvested and replanted, such that every year another 30-year-old crop of trees could be sustainably harvested.  The Schlagwaldwirtschaft is somewhat analogous to the three-field agricultural system of feudal times, where each year one field would be left fallow so that it could recover for heightened future productivity- only on a much larger timescale, due to the slow-growing nature of trees.  This method, however, reduced the function of a healthy forest ecosystem to that of a mere  timber-production utility (Ernst 84).  After repeated cycles through this system, a forest becomes less and less natural, losing many of its indigenous species due to the stress of a repeated harvest, thus deteriorating in its ecological stability (Ernst 88).  As a result, the hallmark of a “well managed” German forest was a neatly geometric, aesthetically basic garden of trees: “Forests might be inspected in much the same way as a commanding officer might review his troops on parade, and woe to the forest guard whose ‘beat’ was not sufficiently trim or ‘dressed.’ This aboveground order required that underbrush be removed and that fallen trees and branches be gathered and hauled off.” (Scott 18)  This intensive management was especially identified as a problem beginning in the 1970s, for as a fragile forest ecosystem deteriorated and was stripped to only its most basic components, important community interactions between trees of varying age-classes (a replanted stand of trees no longer has a mixture of old and new growth), nutrients in the soil, and other organisms such as fungi (e.g.- the symbiotic mycorrhizae, which facilitate nutrient uptake into the roots), insects, mammals, and underbrush diminished, thus producing stunted and unhealthy trees that are less able to cope with the effects of such common anthropomorphic disturbances as acid rain and other forms of mineral disturbance.  To deal with such problems of Waldsterben arising from forests that have been overly sanitized through the Schlagwaldwirtschaft, the ecological roles of missing natural components were replaced with human-introduced substitutes (such as nest boxes to deal with the lack of snags that provided habitat for avifauna, the introduction of managed ant colonies to break down leaf litter and manage the soil, etc.) (Scott 21).  Thus, the Schlagwaldwirtschaft proved not to be the sustainable wonder it was originally thought to be.  Modern German forest practices take such lessons into account.  Newly seeded forests are almost all now comprised of mixed hardwoods and conifers to help alleviate the problems arising from monoculture, and are select-cut to create a stratified forest composed not only of multiple species, but of multiple age classes.  This scheme of forestry involving constant maintenance of a forest to retain its stratified structure, known as Dauerwald, was developed and proposed by a forestry professor of the Prussian Forstakademie Eberswalde, Alfred Möller, in 1922.  At the time it was a very controversial idea which was not well received by politicians due to the slow and labor-intensive rate of timber extraction from a Dauerwald (Rubner, Deutsche Forstgeschichte 28).  However, with the lessons learned from the deteriorating effects of the Schlagwaldwirtschaft, Möller’s models are finally being implemented on a wide scale in Germany.  As Germany’s forests become increasingly more natural in structure as a result of this new methodology, the need for drastic measures such as introduced ants will eventually no longer be necessary as the newly planted forests mature and develop into healthy, self-sustaining ecosystems of their own.

US Environmental History, with comparisons to Germany

In the US, a concern for managing natural resources can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century- with the initial recognition of resource depletion and the beginning of a national parks movement to deal with the reality of an environment steadily being degraded by human consumption.  The national park movement was fathered by George Perkins Marsh, who was famous for introducing the environmental movement to the US in the form of a revolutionary book entitled Man and Nature: The Earth as Modified by Human Action, published in 1864.  The book was one of the major sparks that ignited the national parks movement as “the first modern discussion of our ecological problems,” (Lienhard).

When President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) as chief of the Division of Forestry (known since 1905 as the US Forest Service) in 1901, natural resource management entered a new era of conservation, whose goal was to deliver the greatest good, to the greatest number, for the longest time possible.  Pinchot’s ideology and scientific background in forest management were directly adapted from forestry’s German roots, as he gained most of his practical knowledge of the field (which did not yet exist in the US) by attending a German forestry school in Nancy, France, and visiting some of the great forests of Central Europe.  He wrote, “Germany still holds the high position in forest science which began with Hartig and Cotta. The German forest schools, of which there are seven of the higher grades, are still among the very best, and the study of forestry, both in the schools and in the forest experiment stations, is eagerly pursued. The forests in Prussia, Saxony, and other German States are admirably managed, and yield important returns.” (Pinchot)  As a side note, the Hartig and Cotta referred to by Pinchot were late 18^th- and early 19^th- century German agriculturalists credited for developing much of the early theory regarding sustainable use of forests (Rubner, Frühe Konzeptionen 2).

Though Pinchot had to go abroad to learn the science of forestry, German-born-and-educated forester Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck established the first school of forestry in the US in 1898, the Biltmore Forest School, 91 years after the opening of the first forestry school in Germany (NCSU).  This was a key turning point in natural resource management education in the US, as very soon thereafter forestry schools were incorporated in the Universities of Cornell, Minnesota, and Yale.  Bernard Fernow was another prominent German immigrant who himself was responsible for leading the forestry program at Cornell.  As a result of these three key figures who were educated in the art of forestry in Germany (or in Pinchot’s case a German-style school in France), resource management practices were forever changed in the United States.

There was much resistance, however, to the scientific management of forests.  Pinchot was a conservationist whose environmental principles were utilitarian in nature, that is to secure the greatest economic, recreational and aesthetic value out of forests for both current and future generations; A strong preservationist movement also arose during his time, whose agenda was to maintain primitive wilderness purely for its intrinsic value, which they strongly felt was paramount to extracting maximum economic utility from the land.  John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, was perhaps the most prominent voice for preservation, and often butted heads with his conservationist counterpart at the head of the US Forest Service.  The two began as friends, as they shared a common love for nature, until Muir learned of Pinchot’s support for allowing sheep grazing in public forests, as well as other instances of Pinchot supporting anthropogenic modifications to pristine landscapes.  “The deepening schism between Muir and Pinchot eventually grew into the great split between the preservation wing and the utilitarian wing of the conservation movement,” thus solidifying a polar debate between the parties (Sierra Club).  The drama between these two highly prominent individuals truly defined the difference between conservationists and preservationists in the US; unlike in Germany, where even though the same conservationist (Naturpflege) vs. preservationist (Naturschutz) debates took place in the early 20^th century, both sides shared a common concern for protecting the environment, and the lack of heated debate between the ideologies eventually resulted in the ambiguous interchangeability of the terms Naturpflege and Naturschutz within the German language (Dominick 6).

The management of natural resources in the United States arrived at another important milestone when Aldo Leopold further developed Pinchot’s personal, scientific, and political ideals into a new environmental philosophy for the 20th century.  He thoroughly described his philosophies in a number of literary works, the most well-known and influential of which is A Sand County Almanac, published in 1941 as an ethical perspective of how one should treat the land upon which humans rely for sustenance in a responsible and morally sound manner.   Leopold was also among the first US educated foresters, having earned his forestry degree from Yale in 1909.  Interesting to note as well is Leopold’s impression of German forests, with regard to the effects of the aforementioned Schlagwaldwirtschaft style of forestry which was still being implemented during his time.  In an article about her father, Aldo Leopold, Nina Leopold Bradley recounts his eloquent, yet dismal impressions of German forests in 1935: “That ecological integrity [of northern Mexico] was put into perspective when my father visited the slick, clean forests of Germany in 1935- spruce trees in straight lines, the forest floor devoid of vegetation.  My father came to realize that what was lacking in the German forests was wildness- not wilderness per se, but biodiversity.  He wrote of Germany, ‘The forest landscape is deprived of a certain exuberance which arises from a rich variety of plants fighting with each other for a place in the sun.  It is almost as if the geological clock had been set back to those dim ages when there were only pines and ferns. I never realized before that the melodies of nature are music only when played against the undertones of evolutionary history.  In the German forest one now hears only a dismal fugue!’” (Bradley).

Improvements in resource management practices brought about by the German forestry revolutions, though generally well received and widely implemented in the US, fell by the wayside during the post-war boom of the 1960s.  A new focus on commodities placed a major strain not only on US forests, as timber harvest exceeded sustainable limits, but on all aspects of the environment, as factories kicked into high gear and energy consumption was increasing at previously unheard of levels.  As the problems facing the environment changed, so too did the individuals at the forefront of conservation.  Individuals such as biologist Rachel Carson recognized the dramatic impact that America’s new zeal for production was having on natural resources, and with her messages of warning, she opened the eyes of many ordinary citizens, bringing forth the rise of the modern environmentalist movement in America.  While she did not start the environmental movement in the United States per se, as this movement had been building up since the mid-19^th century, she did inform and mobilize what had either been an apathetic or simply uninformed public of the devastation caused to the environment by industry.  Most notably she drew attention to the harmful use of the chemical DDT as an agricultural pesticide, in the landmark publication of Silent Spring in 1962.  Americans henceforth demanded from their government increased supervision of industry for the sake of protecting our natural heritage, eventually resulting in a complete ban on the use of DDT in 1973.  Incidentally, this took place a year after DDT was banned in Germany, where Carson’s warnings were heeded as well.  The German translation of Silent Spring was the country’s number one best selling book for several months (Dominick 123).  Rachel Carson’s influence not only on specific environmental issues, but on raising public involvement in government decisions affecting the environment, is considered the turning point in US environmental history which gave rise to our present state of modern environmentalism.

            When one compares the environmental history of Germany with that of America, there is a noticeable trend- beginning with the vigorous deforestation and reclamation of land during feudal times in Germany- of most major historical changes regarding the environment presenting themselves in Germany before occurring in the United States.  For instance, the very issue land reclamation during feudal times was considered a religious duty, much in the same way manifest destiny was considered a righteous undertaking in the United States generations later (Simmons 174).  The following table compares some of the major milestones in environmental history between the two nations:

            Although the scope of the table is limited, it serves as a useful demonstration of how analogous events in German and American environmental history seem to depict a distinct trend of environmental policies appearing to originate in Germany prior to their implementation in the US.  Ironically, this trend is quite the opposite from what one would expect, considering that most social trends of the past century began in the US, eventually spreading eastward to Europe as they are often for better or worse imitated by the rest of the world.  After nearly 100 years, Gifford Pinchot’s statement that, “Except China, all civilized nations care for the forest. Until recently the United States ranked nearly with China in this respect, and our country still remains far behind the progressive modern nations in nearly all that relates to the protection, preservation, and conservative use of the forest,” still seems to hold accuracy not only with regard to forests, but all environmental issues, at least when we compare the seemingly lagging timeline of American environmentalism to that of Germany (Pinchot).

Though it would be easy to presume from this information that Germany is more progressive by nature than the United States, there are many possible explanations for the pattern of environmental trends seeming to originate in Germany, only later to be adopted by the US.  One reason may be that Germans have a much older cultural history, and thus perhaps a more intimate connection with the land they have inhabited for many centuries- as opposed to Americans, who aside from American Indians have only inhabited this land for a little over two centuries.  While Germany was undergoing massive expansion, encroaching into primitive wilderness areas during the Middle Ages, the United States did not even exist yet.  Additionally, Germany’s natural resources have always been strictly managed by the various governments in power over the centuries, dating back to the Jagdrecht possessed by the nobility in the Middle Ages.  In the early stages of the national development of the United States, hunting, fishing and timber harvesting were basically considered a free-for-all for many decades following initial European Settlement.  Thus, German society has been cultured to accept strict governmental controls of resources from before they even attained nationhood.  In the United States, on the other hand, there may still be a lingering cultural expectation that resources are unlimited and free for the taking, leading in turn to general resistance to increased government regulation of the environment.  Yet another explanation for this phenomenon may be that Germany’s much greater population density may have forced them to make decisions to limit resource consumption and set aside protected lands at a much earlier time simply because they didn’t have the abundance of resources and space that we have in the United States to keep them going on the path of ever-increasing consumption still so rampant in America.  At the time Pinchot made his above statement, there were still enough forests in the country to continue cutting without fear of running out in the immediate future, while in Germany, with its tighter resource availability, the people had to act more quickly to avoid catastrophic resource depletion.

Returning again to the last entry in the table, Rachel Carson’s influence on American environmentalism was compared with the Green Party’s influence on German environmentalism, as these are considered the turning points in defining the modern environmentalist movements for their respective nations.  However, it is interesting to note that over the past two decades, the Green Party has begun establishing itself as a major political force in the United States as well.  The Green Party USA’s website directly attributes their political philosophies as having been, “Inspired by the success of the German Green Party.”  Though it is interesting to note that once again the United States is following an environmental trend that began years earlier in Germany, there is a major difference in the case of the Green Party in that Germany’s political system allows for the representation of parties in the Bundestag who receive at least 5% of the popular vote, even if they do not win by a majority.  The winner-takes-all elective system adopted by the United States is far less conducive to the emergence of a third party of any significant power.  Despite such obstacles, however, the Green Party is gaining ground in many local elections, has won a handful of seats in the US House of Representatives, and has even succeeded in placing a major candidate on the 2000 presidential ballot, Ralph Nader.

            While everything discussed thus far is but a scratching of the surface of Germany’s vast environmental history, along with comparisons to and influences on that of the United States- it is critical for us to understand our societies’ past with regard to the environment if we are to make responsible decisions for the future.  Beginning with the initial mistakes each country made in feeling it was their duty to cultivate and appropriate the land and its resources without regard to -or even knowledge of- the concept of sustainability for future generations, to the gradual realization that such reckless expansion was not only destructive to the environment but to our quality of life.  Through studying all of the impacts we have had on our environment over the centuries, we can help our understanding of the situation we now face with regard to the world we inhabit.  The many changes Germany has undergone with regard to its natural resource policies through time, along with the similar experiences recognized here in the United States, have led us into a new era of social and political environmental stewardship, which is bolstered on a daily basis as more and more citizens become aware of increasing limitations to what once was treated as an limitless supply of resources from the planet.
Works Cited:

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