Von Ungestörten Naturprozessen, Totem Holz und Angestammten Natur-Kultur-Ordnungen. Anmerkungen zur Kultur der „Neuen Wildnis“

Abstract

Considerations for creating protected areas in which nature is left to its own devices already existed in the early days of German nature conservation, around 1900. The idea that primeval forest or wildlife could re-emerge in areas made up of cultural landscapes was formulated by the Prussian educator and politician Wilhelm Wetekamp, and has increasingly become popular in recent decades. By avoiding, as far as possible, human interventions, wildlife should be created anew in national parks and also in smaller protected areas: thus, the attempt to abolish culture becomes cultural abandonment. This conversion of forests shaped by human activity generates conflicts between those who see in this a destruction of the balance between nature and culture, and those who see in “letting nature be nature” an opportunity for natural development. Both positions refer to fundamental ideas about forests: on the one hand, the forest as a world of daily life and work, and, on the other, a nature to be protected from human invasion, a place of biodiversity, but at the same time of recreation, a counter-world of everyday life.

Keywords

• Forests
• national parks of Germany
• nature conservation
• wilderness
• process protection