16925

SoSe 24: Green Germany

Susanne Scharnowski

Information for students

Workload and Assessment: To obtain 5 ECTS credits, you will have to attend the course regularly and have studied the course materials (studying an average of 15-20 pages of texts in English per week as well as listening to recorded lectures). You will also have to pass the mid-term test and the written final examination. close

Additional information / Pre-requisites

Is this the right course for you? The course is open to students from all fields. You should be interested in environmental questions in an historical, cultural, and political perspective, and you should be prepared to study and discuss academic and complex journalistic texts written in English. close

Comments

Topic: Germany presents itself as a country that leads the way in climate protection, in the development of renewable energies, and in waste separation and recycling, in short: as a ‘green’ country, even as the “Greenest Nation”. This perceived ‘greenness’, however, is not an entirely new phenomenon: Since the Napoleonic Wars, Germans have seen and presented themselves as closer to nature than other nations. The course will examine the evolution of this idea of “Green Germany” through history. Program: We will study key moments in the history of the German relationship to nature and the environment, looking at the role of grassroot movements on the one hand and state policy on the other hand. Topics we will discuss include the movement for nature conservation at the end of the 19th century; the period of National Socialism, when the legal foundations of the protection of the environment were laid; the environmental movement of the 1970s in West Germany; environmental protection in East Germany, and, finally, current debates and conflicts around the conservation of nature and landscape on the one hand and climate protection as well as energy policy on the other hand, looking at government policy and protest movements. We will also examine the specifically German attachment to the forest: accordingly, one session will take us to Grunewald, the large forest in Berlin. Some of the materials (presentations and film clips) will be available on Blackboard; additionally, students have to purchase the reader (a collection of photocopied texts in printed form) from the copy shop at Königin-Luise-Str. 39, near U-Bahnhof Dahlem Dorf. close