Turning to Nature in Germany

Turning to Nature in Germany PDF Author: John Alexander Williams
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804700153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Turning to Nature in Germany traces the history of organized hiking, nudism, and conservation in the earlier twentieth century, showing how hundreds of thousands of Germans sought to find solutions to the nation's crises in nature

Turning to Nature in Germany

Turning to Nature in Germany PDF Author: John Alexander Williams
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804700153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
Turning to Nature in Germany traces the history of organized hiking, nudism, and conservation in the earlier twentieth century, showing how hundreds of thousands of Germans sought to find solutions to the nation's crises in nature

Eating Nature in Modern Germany

Eating Nature in Modern Germany PDF Author: Corinna Treitel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131699158X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and the Dachau concentration camp had an organic herb garden. Vegetarianism, organic farming, and other such practices have enticed a wide variety of Germans, from socialists, liberals, and radical anti-Semites in the nineteenth century to fascists, communists, and Greens in the twentieth century. Corinna Treitel offers a fascinating new account of how Germans became world leaders in developing more 'natural' ways to eat and farm. Used to conserve nutritional resources with extreme efficiency at times of hunger and to optimize the nation's health at times of nutritional abundance, natural foods and farming belong to the biopolitics of German modernity. Eating Nature in Modern Germany brings together histories of science, medicine, agriculture, the environment, and popular culture to offer the most thorough and historically comprehensive treatment yet of this remarkable story.

Germany's Nature

Germany's Nature PDF Author: Thomas Lekan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813537703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Germany boasts one of the strongest environmental records in the world. The Rhine River is cleaner than it has been in decades, recycling is considered a civic duty, and German manufacturers of pollution-control technology export their products around the globe. Yet, little has been written about the country's remarkable environmental history, and even less of that research is available in English. Now for the first time, a survey of the country's natural and cultural landscapes is available in one volume. Essays by leading scholars of history, geography, and the social sciences move beyond the Green movement to uncover the enduring yet ever-changing cultural patterns, social institutions, and geographic factors that have sustained Germany's relationship to its land. Unlike the American environmental movement, which is still dominated by debates about wilderness conservation and the retention of untouched spaces, discussions of the German landscape have long recognized human impact as part of the "natural order." Drawing on a variety of sites as examples, including forests, waterways, the Autobahn, and natural history museums, the essays demonstrate how environmental debates in Germany have generally centered on the best ways to harmonize human priorities and organic order, rather than on attempts to reify wilderness as a place to escape from industrial society. Germany's Nature is essential reading for students and professionals working in the fields of environmental studies, European history, and the history of science and technology.

Vital Forces, Teleology and Organization

Vital Forces, Teleology and Organization PDF Author: Andrea Gambarotto
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319654152
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive account of vitalism and the Romantic philosophy of nature. The author explores the rise of biology as a unified science in Germany by reconstructing the history of the notion of “vital force,” starting from the mid-eighteenth through the early nineteenth century. Further, he argues that Romantic Naturphilosophie played a crucial role in the rise of biology in Germany, especially thanks to its treatment of teleology. In fact, both post-Kantian philosophers and naturalists were guided by teleological principles in defining the object of biological research. The book begins by considering the problem of generation, focusing on the debate over the notion of “formative force.” Readers are invited to engage with the epistemological status of this formative force, i.e. the question of the principle behind organization. The second chapter provides a reconstruction of the physiology of vital forces as it was elaborated in the mid- to late-eighteenth century by the group of physicians and naturalists known as the “Göttingen School.” Readers are shown how these authors developed an understanding of the animal kingdom as a graded series of organisms with increasing functional complexity. Chapter three tracks the development of such framework in Romantic Naturphilosophie. The author introduces the reader to the problem of classification, showing how Romantic philosophers of nature regarded classification as articulated by a unified plan that connects all living forms with one another, relying on the idea of living nature as a universal organism. In the closing chapter, this analysis shows how the three instances of pre-biological discourse on living beings – theory of generation, physiology and natural history – converged to form the consolidated disciplinary matrix of a general biology. The book offers an insightful read for all scholars interested in classical German philosophy, especially those researching the philosophy of nature, as well as the history and philosophy of biology.

The Turning Points of Environmental History

The Turning Points of Environmental History PDF Author: Frank Uekötter
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822977621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
From the time when humans first learned to harness fire, cultivate crops, and domesticate livestock, they have altered their environment as a means of survival. In the modern era, however, natural resources have been devoured and defiled in the wake of a consumerism that goes beyond mere subsistence. In this volume, an international group of environmental historians documents the significant ways in which humans have impacted their surroundings throughout history. John McNeill introduces the collection with an overarching account of the history of human environmental impact. Other contributors explore the use and abuse of the earth's land in the development of agriculture, commercial forestry, and in the battle against desertification in arid and semi-arid regions. Cities, which first appeared some 5,500 years ago, have posed their own unique environmental challenges, including dilemmas of solid waste disposal, sewerage, disease, pollution, and sustainable food and water supplies. The rise of nation-states brought environmental legislation, which often meant "selling off" natural resources through eminent domain. Perhaps the most damaging environmental event in history resulted from a "perfect storm" of effects: cheap fossil fuels (especially petroleum) and the rapid rise of personal incomes during the 1950s brought an exponential increase in energy consumption and unforseen levels of greenhouse gasses to the earth's atmosphere. By the 1970s, the deterioration of air, land, and water due to industrialization, population growth, and consumerism led to the birth of the environmental and ecological movements. Overall, the volume points to the ability and responsibility of humans to reverse the course of detrimental trends and to achieve environmental sustainability for existing and future populations.

Einstein in Berlin

Einstein in Berlin PDF Author: Thomas Levenson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0525508953
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
In a book that is both biography and the most exciting form of history, here are eighteen years in the life of a man, Albert Einstein, and a city, Berlin, that were in many ways the defining years of the twentieth century. Einstein in Berlin In the spring of 1913 two of the giants of modern science traveled to Zurich. Their mission: to offer the most prestigious position in the very center of European scientific life to a man who had just six years before been a mere patent clerk. Albert Einstein accepted, arriving in Berlin in March 1914 to take up his new post. In December 1932 he left Berlin forever. “Take a good look,” he said to his wife as they walked away from their house. “You will never see it again.” In between, Einstein’s Berlin years capture in microcosm the odyssey of the twentieth century. It is a century that opens with extravagant hopes--and climaxes in unparalleled calamity. These are tumultuous times, seen through the life of one man who is at once witness to and architect of his day--and ours. He is present at the events that will shape the journey from the commencement of the Great War to the rumblings of the next one. We begin with the eminent scientist, already widely recognized for his special theory of relativity. His personal life is in turmoil, with his marriage collapsing, an affair under way. Within two years of his arrival in Berlin he makes one of the landmark discoveries of all time: a new theory of gravity--and before long is transformed into the first international pop star of science. He flourishes during a war he hates, and serves as an instrument of reconciliation in the early months of the peace; he becomes first a symbol of the hope of reason, then a focus for the rage and madness of the right. And throughout these years Berlin is an equal character, with its astonishing eruption of revolutionary pathways in art and architecture, in music, theater, and literature. Its wild street life and sexual excesses are notorious. But with the debacle of the depression and Hitler’s growing power, Berlin will be transformed, until by the end of 1932 it is no longer a safe home for Einstein. Once a hero, now vilified not only as the perpetrator of “Jewish physics” but as the preeminent symbol of all that the Nazis loathe, he knows it is time to leave.

The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany

The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany PDF Author: David Blackbourn
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324000988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
"Brilliantly conceived....[A] tour de force in historical writing."—Ian Kershaw Majestic and lyrically written, The Conquest of Nature traces the rise of Germany through the development of water and landscape. David Blackbourn begins his morality tale in the mid-1700s, with the epic story of Frederick the Great, who attempted—by importing the great scientific minds of the West and by harnessing the power of his army—to transform the uninhabitable marshlands of his scattered kingdom into a modern state. Chronicling the great engineering projects that reshaped the mighty Rhine, the emergence of an ambitious German navy, and the development of hydroelectric power to fuel Germany's convulsive industrial growth before World War I, Blackbourn goes on to show how Nazi racial policies rested on German ideas of mastery of the natural world. Filled with striking reproductions of paintings, maps, and photographs, this grand work of modern history links culture, politics, and the environment in an exploration of the perils faced by nations that attempt to conquer nature.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany

The Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany PDF Author: Matthew Jefferies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317043200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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Book Description
Germany's imperial era (1871-1918) continues to attract both scholars and the general public alike. The American historian Roger Chickering has referred to the historiography on the Kaiserreich as an 'extraordinary body of historical scholarship', whose quality and diversity stands comparison with that of any other episode in European history. This Companion is a significant addition to this body of scholarship with the emphasis very much on the present and future. Questions of continuity remain a vital and necessary line of historical enquiry and while it may have been short-lived, the Kaiserreich remains central to modern German and European history. The volume allows 25 experts, from across the globe, to write at length about the state of research in their own specialist fields, offering original insights as well as historiographical reflections, and rounded off with extensive suggestions for further reading. The chapters are grouped into five thematic sections, chosen to reflect the full range of research being undertaken on imperial German history today and together offer a comprehensive and authoritative reference resource. Overall this collection will provide scholars and students with a lively take on this fascinating period of German history, from the nation’s unification in 1871 right up until the end of World War I.

The United States and Germany During the Twentieth Century

The United States and Germany During the Twentieth Century PDF Author: Christof Mauch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521197813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century presents a wide ranging comparison of American and German societies during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The two countries - the world's leading "rising powers" of the time - were both more similar and more different than is widely understood. Above all, their dual encounter with modernity brings out the richness of both societies as they faced unprecedented internal and external challenges, sometimes in isolation, but more often in combination or in parallel with one another.

Factivity: Its Nature and Acquisition

Factivity: Its Nature and Acquisition PDF Author: Petra Schulz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110929546
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Challenging existing lexical-semantic accounts, this book presents a compositional approach to the concept of factivity and its acquisition. Factive sentences such as 'John forgot that he bought wine' presuppose the truth of the embedded complement. The author argues that a satisfactory characterization of factivity can only be accomplished if its multiple dimensions are acknowledged. A thorough examination of the empirical data demonstrates that factivity, rather than being a property of the matrix predicate, results from the complex interaction of lexical-semantic, syntactic, and discourse-semantic factors. Focusing on English, the predictions of this compositional approach to factivity are tested with production and comprehension data covering children's acquisitional patterns between the ages of 2 and 8. After a comprehensive review of previous studies, the author presents two rigorously designed comprehension experiments and a detailed analysis of two longitudinal corpora. The child data provides convincing evidence that the multidimensionality of factivity is mirrored in the acquisition process by a stepwise mastery of its different components. Children produce and correctly interpret factive structures around age 4, but certain syntactic and discourse-semantic properties are not learned before age 7. This book should be of interest to advanced students and researchers in both theoretical linguistics and language acquisition.