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Thinking about and relating to the environment – what the Germans call Umwelt, i.e., the world that surrounds us – in the way that we do today has a long tradition within modern German culture. German scientists were among the many European explorers that left Europe in the late eighteenth century on voyages of discovery to then unknown parts of the world. For some explorers, discovery meant the fundamental confirmation of their own superiority vis-à-vis primitive peoples and primitive natures; for others it resulted in a shake-up of their belief in the superiority of European civilization in the face of the achievements of other civilizations, or in the face of spectacular nature scenes that outperformed the temperate European landscapes in terms of scale, sublimity, and grandeur. The documents that contain these stories of discovery left an important impression not only on German culture, but on European civilization at large, defining it vis-à-vis other civilizations and other natures. Europe today is the product of these encounters, including the way we conceive of our Umwelt, the environment that surrounds us. The story told in this book is the story of the rise of the modern German environmental imagination with particular emphasis on its narrative and visual components, complementing and expanding Barbara Stafford’s important work in her seminal study of the illustrated travel account from 1984. Chapters on Georg Forster, Alexander von Humboldt, Albert Bierstadt, Leni Riefenstahl, and Werner Herzog unfold the key stages in a process that constitutes the unfolding of the modern German environmental imagination.
Price: $93.00
Pages: 236
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Nature, Culture and Literature
Publication Date:
02 April 2015
ISBN: 9789004297852
Format: Paperback
“German ecocritical scholarship is rapidly growing, with Sabine Wilke’s volume being a milestone in the formation of a new canon. With German Culture and the Modern Environmental Imagination, Wilke manages to offer an introduction and brief history of German environmental thought; consider disciplines as diverse as aesthetics, art, film, and literature; address discourses from the tropics to the poles; and pull together an impressive array of scholarship. Thus her volume is bound to become a handy standard to introduce the environmental views of German thinkers, researchers, and artists from Immanuel Kant to Alexander von Humboldt, Georg Forster, and Werner Herzog, and to familiarize oneself and one’s students more generally with German environmental contexts.” - Caroline Schaumann, Emory University, in: Monatshefte 108.3 (2016), pp. 407-409
“Sabine Wilke astutely notes that nature, as it is seen in all artistic or descriptive forms, is staged – founded upon the theatricality inherent to nature. This moment, this point of human engagement with nature, is the flashpoint where humanity processes the experience by way of language and art. Wilke offers in this book, taking her examples from German literature and visual art, a compelling articulation and examination of this moment, and demonstrates its continual renewal in the shape of the new and different framings that drive the evolution of the modern environmental imagination.” - Mark W. Person, University of Wyoming, in: Environmental Values 25.2 (2016), pp. 250-252
“While Wilke’s book reflects on the ecocritical potential that resides in dynamics of visual perception, it is also an aesthetic experience in itself. Equipped with a very suitable collage-style landscape cover and featuring many multi-coloured illustrations of pictures and images that she mentions throughout, it is a beautiful addition to Brill’s Nature, Culture and Literature series.” - Simone Schröder, University of Bath, UK, in: Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 20.2, pp. 221-222
“Sabine Wilke astutely notes that nature, as it is seen in all artistic or descriptive forms, is staged – founded upon the theatricality inherent to nature. This moment, this point of human engagement with nature, is the flashpoint where humanity processes the experience by way of language and art. Wilke offers in this book, taking her examples from German literature and visual art, a compelling articulation and examination of this moment, and demonstrates its continual renewal in the shape of the new and different framings that drive the evolution of the modern environmental imagination.” - Mark W. Person, University of Wyoming, in: Environmental Values 25.2 (2016), pp. 250-252
“While Wilke’s book reflects on the ecocritical potential that resides in dynamics of visual perception, it is also an aesthetic experience in itself. Equipped with a very suitable collage-style landscape cover and featuring many multi-coloured illustrations of pictures and images that she mentions throughout, it is a beautiful addition to Brill’s Nature, Culture and Literature series.” - Simone Schröder, University of Bath, UK, in: Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 20.2, pp. 221-222
Sabine Wilke is professor of German at the University of Washington.