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Nature and German History. Faith – Biology – Power

More Story

With our digital offer “More Story”, you can gain insight into the exhibition without visiting the museum. Raphael Gross, President of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, shows how the exhibition fi ts into the overarching programme of the museum. Curator Julia Voss reports on the concept of the exhibition and project head Dorlis Blume explains what awaits visitors in the exhibition.

Table of contents

Nature is a radiant, politically charged concept. But what does it mean? How has this understanding changed in the context of faith, biology and power? The exhibition focuses on the question of how and why ideas about nature have changed. It covers examples from 800 years of German history, stretching from the writings of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century to the emergence of environmental policy in the 1970s.

Miniature on the blooming and wilting “greening power” from “Liber divinorum operum” by Hildegard of Bingen, fourth vision, Rhine scriptorium, 2nd or 3rd decade of the 13th century

Miniature on the blooming and wilting “greening power” from “Liber divinorum operum” by Hildegard of Bingen, fourth vision, Rhine scriptorium, 2nd or 3rd decade of the 13th century

© Biblioteca Statale di Lucca

President Raphael Gross

Curator Julia Voss

Project manager Dorlis Blume

Konrad von Megenberg’s (1309−1374), “Book of Nature” was first illustrated more than one hundred years after it was written. For him, nature included the earth and all the spheres of the universe.

Konrad von Megenberg’s (1309−1374), “Book of Nature” was first illustrated more than one hundred years after it was written. For him, nature included the earth and all the spheres of the universe.

© DHM

Middle Ages

Around 1200, many towns and monasteries were founded in German-speaking countries. Vast cultural landscapes of fields, meadows and pastures grew up. Hildegard of Bingen explored the concept of “viriditas”, the creative greening power, which she understood as the basis of all emergent life. At that time, the term “nature”, a word borrowed from the Latin “natura”, was still not widely used. That changed at the latest in the 14th century, with the publication of Konrad von Megenberg’s “Book of Nature”. It is considered the first systematic German-language compendium of all that was known of natural history.

Made in 1892, this copy of Martin Behaim’s globe, known as the “Erdapfel” (literally “earth apple”), was originally created in Nuremberg at the end of the 15th century.

Made in 1892, this copy of Martin Behaim’s globe, known as the “Erdapfel” (literally “earth apple”), was originally created in Nuremberg at the end of the 15th century.

© DHM

Early Modern Age

The exhibition throws light on further historical turning points and formative events that led to changes in the concept of nature. The Fuggers of Augsburg, for example, became one of the most powerful trading houses in Europe, with a wide-ranging network of branches and partners. With every passing century, a growing stream of plants, animals and goods arrived in the German-speaking world, changing it for all time. When and how did the Peruvian potato become a traditional German vegetable? Why was the researcher and artist Maria Sibylla Merian from Frankfurt am Main so interested in the Asian silkworm? International trade and commerce spurred researchers and scholars to develop a concept of nature that was subject to rules and laws.

Many of these changes went hand in hand with widespread destruction. During the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, the wolf became a metaphor for violence and desolation, symbolised by the wolf depicted on the exhibition poster.

Sebastian Vrancx, “Mercenaries plunder a farmstead”, Antwerp, around 1620

© DHM

Handbill from the Thirty Years’ War with a “Picture of the merciless, dreadful, cruel, and ghoulish animal” ca. 1630

© Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek

Maria Sibylla Merian, “The Metamorphosis of the Silk Moth”, in: “De Europische Insecten” (“Insects of Europe”), Panel I, Amsterdam, 1730

© DHM

Friedrich Fröbel founded the first kindergarten in Thuringia. His songbook with poems and illustrations “Mutter- und Kose-Lieder” (1844) aimed to encourage children to play in nature.

Friedrich Fröbel founded the first kindergarten in Thuringia. His songbook with poems and illustrations “Mutter- und Kose-Lieder” (1844) aimed to encourage children to play in nature.

© Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Industrialisation and National Socialismus

The Industrial Revolution began in Germany around 1830. In the 20th century, it led to the development of railways, steamships and factories, advances in medicine and the chemical industry, and individual motorisation. These rapid changes shaped the image of nature. Culture and nature were increasingly seen as opposites. Discussions took place in politics, society and science about what should be considered “natural”. The nationalist movement declared the “German forest” to be the natural source of common identity. In the newly established kindergartens, boys and girls were to be educated “naturally”. A new term emerged: “conservation”. From 1933 onwards, the National Socialists attempted to turn “German nature” into a normative concept, subjecting populations and landscapes to this ideology with brutal means. The “Nuremberg Laws” and the “Reich Nature Conservation Act” were both enacted in the same year: 1935.

The zoologist Ernst Haeckel from Jena was the most important advocate of the theory of evolution. In 1850, at the age of 16, he painted the “National Assembly of Birds”

© Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Ernst-Haeckel-Haus

The Berlin artist Lotte Laserstein painted “On the Motorcycle” in 1929. Her cousin Kurt Lazaros posed for the picture with his motorcycle.

© DHM

Model of the bucket-chain crawler excavator ERs 700, Magdeburg, 1953/1956. Excavators like this bucket-chain crawler had been used to form the landscape of the Lausitz brown-coal mining district since the 1890s

Model of the bucket-chain crawler excavator ERs 700, Magdeburg, 1953/1956. Excavators like this bucket-chain crawler had been used to form the landscape of the Lausitz brown-coal mining district since the 1890s

© DHM

Divided Germany

In the 1950s, energy demands rose rapidly in both parts of Germany. In the Federal Republic, coal from the Ruhr District and imported oil provided the energy. In the GDR, huge brown-coal mining areas were created. Both states introduced industrial livestock farming. The growing concentration of pollutants contaminated the air and water. A new term was coined: “environmental protection”. In Wyhl am Kaiserstuhl, a civil protest movement succeeded in preventing the construction of a nuclear power plant. Images drawn from German history appeared on the posters: motifs from the Peasants’ War in the 16th century.

Protest march on 25 August 1974 against the lead chemical factory in Marckolsheim and the nuclear power plant in Wyhl in the Wyhl forest

© Bernd Nössler

Motifs from the Peasants’ War and Alemannic slogans were found on the protest poster celebrating one year of occupation of the construction site of the Wyhl nuclear power plant, Wyhl, 1976

© Bernd Nössler