Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons From the German Experience

Re: Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons From the German Experience

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EPILOGUE-RIGHT-WING ECOLOGY IN GERMANY: ASSESSING THE HISTORICAL LEGACY PETER STAUDENMAIER, 2011

1. Examples include Mark Neocleous, Fascism (University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Steve Chase, "Green Stormtroopers in the Streets of Berlin?" Z Papers October 1999; Kev Smith, "Ecofascism: Deep Ecology and Right- Wing Co-optation" Synthesis/Regeneration 32 (Fall 2003). For subsequent debates generated by the original edition of the book see the exchange on Rudolf Bahro in Democracy and Nature 11/12 (1998) and the exchange on ecofascism and neo-paganism in The Pomegranate: Journal of Pagan Studies 17/18 (2002).

2. Claudia Card, review of Ecofascism in Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996), 201-04; Ronald Creagh, review of Ecofascism in Social Anarchism 26 (1998).

3. The text originally appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, November 13, 2003.

4 See e.g. David Orton's 2000 essay "Ecofascism: What is It? A Left Biocentric Analysis": http://home.ca.inter.net/-greenweb/Ecofascism.html' All internet sites cited here were accessed in December 2010.

5. A representative example is Gus di Zerega's 2010 essay "Environmentalism, NeoPaganism and EcoFascism: Here We Go Again": http://blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2 ... again.html

6. See David Watson, "Swamp Fever, Primitivism & the 'Ideological Vortex': Farewell to All That" Fifth Estate Fall 1997, as well as 'Nick Griffin', "National Anarchism: Trojan Horse for White Nationalism" Green Anarchy Spring 2005. Watson's essay is available online: http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/swampfever.htm

7. Michael Zimmerman, "The Threat of Ecofascism" Social Theory and Practice 21 (1995),207-38; Zimmerman, "Ecofascism: A Threat to American Environmentalism?" in Roger Gottlieb, ed., The Ecological Community (Routledge, 1997), 229-54; Zimmerman, "Possible Political Problems of Earth-Based Religiosity" in Eric Katz, Andrew Light, and David Rothenberg, eds., Beneath the Surface: Critical Essays on Deep Ecology (MIT Press, 2000), 169-94; Zimmerman, "Ecofascism: An Enduring Temptation" in Zimmerman, ed., Environmental Philosophy (Prentice Hall, 2004), 390-408; Zimmerman, "Ecofascism" in Bron Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Continuum, 2005), 531-32.

8. One prominent example is the second chapter of Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage, 1996). A more detailed but less perspicacious account can be found in the chapter on "Nazi Ecology" in Luc Ferry, The New Ecological Order (University of Chicago Press, 1995). Both works are committed to liberal assumptions and averse to radical political perspectives.

9. See e.g. Alston Chase, In a Dark Wood: The Fight over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995).

10. Cf. the entries in Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, above all Roger Griffin, "Fascism." 639-44, as well as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitlers Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York University Press, 1998), and Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York University Press, 2002). The final chapter of Hitler's Priestess, on "Nazis, Greens, and the New Age," is especially apposite for enthusiasts of biocentrism, paganism, and esotericism.

11. Peter Zegers, "The Dark Side of Political Ecology" Communalism 3 (December 2002). On ecofascism in the UK see Derek Wall, "Darker Shades of Green": http://another-green-world.blogspot.com ... green.html. On the US see Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America (New York: Guilford, 2000), as well as the website of Political Research Associates, http://www.publiceye.org. Additional sources include Emanuel Sferios, "Population, Immigration, and the Environment: Ecofascism and the environmental movement" Z Magazine June 1998; Helene Loow, "The Idea of Purity: The Swedish Racist Counterculture, Animal Rights, and Environmental Protection" in Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow, eds., The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 193-210; Jeff Shantz, "Scarcity and the Emergence of Fundamentalist Ecology" Critique of Anthropology 23 (2003), 144-54; Rajani Bhatia, "Green or Brown? White Nativist Environmental Movements" in Abby Ferber, ed., Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism (Routledge, 2004), 194-213; "Browns and Greens" in Martin Lee, The Beast Reawakens (Routledge, 2000), 214-21; Roger Griffin, "Fascism's New Faces (and New Facelessness) in the 'post-fascist' Epoch" in Griffin, A Fascist Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 181-202.

12. For background on Tanton see Christopher Hayes, "Keeping America Empty: How one small-town conservationist launched today's anti-immigration movement" On These Times April 24, 2006, and Heidi Beirich, "The Tanton Files: Nativist Leader's Racist Past Exposed" Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report Winter 2008, as well as the website of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism: http://www.ferris.edu/isar/. Further context is available in Peter Hay, "Green Political Thought: The Authoritarian and Conservative Traditions" in Hay, Main Currents ill Western Environmental Thought (Indiana University Press, 2002), 173- 93, and Eric Neumayer, "The environment: One more reason to keep immigrants out?" Ecological Economics 59 (2006), 204-07. On European far-right groups opposing immigration on environmental grounds see Stephan Faris, Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change (New York: Holt, 2009), 62-94.

13. Cf. Gray Brechin, "Conserving The Race: Natural Aristocracies, Eugenics, and the U.S. Conservation Movement" Antipode 28 (1996), 229-45; Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Island Press, 2005), 328-35; John Jackson and Nadine Weidman, Race, Racism, and Science (Rutgers University Press, 2006), 110-12; Alden Whitman, "Lindbergh and Conservation" New York Times June 23,1969; Jonathan Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (University of Vermont Press, 2008).

14. Jonathan Olsen, Nature and Nationalism: Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany (New York: St. Martin's, 1999) and Oliver Geden, Rechte Okologie: Umweltschutz zwischen Emanzipation und Faschismus (Berlin: Elefanten, 1996).

15. Principal examples include Richard Stoss, Vom Nationalismus zum Umweltschutz (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, )980); Thomas Jahn and Peter Wehling, Okologie von rechts: Nationalismus und Umweltschutz bei der Neuen Rechten und den "Republikanern" (Frankfurt: Campus, 1990); Volkmar Wolk, Natur und Mythos: Okologiekonzeptionen der 'Neuen' Rechten im Spannungsfeld zwischen Blut und Boden und New Age (Duisburg: Duisburger Institut fur Sprach- und Sozialforschung, 1992); Jurgen Wust, Konservatismus und Okologiebewegung (Frankfurt: Verlag fur interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1993); Justus H. Ulbricht, "Die Heimat als Umwelt des Volkes: Okologische Denkfiguren in Ideologie und Programmatik 'neurechter' Organisationen" in Richard Faber, Hajo Funke, and Gerhard Schoenberner, eds., Rechtsextremismus: Ideologie und Gewalt (Berlin: Hentrich, 1995), 221-40; Ulrich Linse, '''Fundamentalistischer' Heimatschutz: Die 'Naturphilosophie' Reinhard Falters" in Uwe Puschner and Ulrich Grossmann, eds., Volkisch und national: Zur Aktualitat alter Denkmuster im 21. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), 156-78.

16. Cf. Dan Stone, "The Far Right and the Back-to-the-Land Movement" in Julie Gottlieb and Thomas Linehan, eds., The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (London: Tauris, 2004), 182-98; Richard Moore- Colyer, "Towards 'Mother Earth': Jorian Jenks, Organicism, the Right and the British Union of Fascists" Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004), 353-71; Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945 (London: Tauris, 2007), 63-66; Matthew Jefferies and Mike Tyldesley, eds., Rolf Gardiner: Folk, Nature and Culture in Interwar Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); see also Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Gemany, t133-39 (London: Constable, 1980), 142-46, 237-39, 317-28; Dan Stone, "The Extremes of Englishness: The 'Exceptional' Ideology of Anthony Mario Ludovici" Journal of Political Ideologies 4 (1999), 191-219; Matthew Reed, "Fight the Future! How the Contemporary Campaigns of the UK Organic Movement Have Arisen from their Composting of the Past" Sociologia Ruralis 41 (200 I), 131-45; Philip Conford, "Finance versus Farming: Rural Reconstruction and Economic Reform, 1894-1955" Rural History 13 (2002), 225-41; Dan Stone, "The English Mistery, the BUF, and the Dilemmas of British Fascism" Journal of Modern History 75 (2003), 336-58; Philip Conford, "Organic Society: Agriculture and Radical Politics in the Career of Gerard Wallop, Ninth Earl of Portsmouth (1898-1984)" Agricultural History Review 53 (2005), 78-96.

17. On neo-paganism see Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Duke University Press, 2003); Karla Poewe, "Scientific neo-paganism and the extreme right then and today" Journal of Contemporary Religion 14 (1999), 387-400; Betty Dobratz, "The Role of Religion in the Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (200 1), 287-301; Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse University Press, 1997); Horst Junginger, ed., The Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Andreas Speit, "Esoterik und Neuheidentum: Historische Allianzen und aktuelle Tendenzen" in Jens Mecklenburg, ed., Handbuch deutscher Rechtsextremismus (Berlin: Elefanten, 1996), 709-32; Eduard Gugenberger and Roman Schweidlenka, Mutter Erde - Magie und Politik: Zwischen Faschismus und neuer Gesellschaft (Vienna: Verlag fur Gesellschaftskritik, 1987); Stefanie von Schnurbein, Gottertrost in Wendezeiten: Neugermanisches Heidentum zwischen New Age und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Claudius, 1993); Franziska Hundseder, Wotans Junger: Neuheidnische Gruppen zwischen Esoterik und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Heyne, 1998); Hubert Cancik and Uwe Puschner, eds., Antisemitismus, Paganismus, Volkische Religion (Munich: Saur, 2004); Miro Jennerjahn, Neue Rechte und Heidentum (Frankfurt: Lang, 2006); Felix Wiedemann, Rassenmutter und Rebellin: Hexenbilder in Romantik, volkischer Bewegung, Neuheidentum und Feminismus (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2007); Sandra Franz, Die Religion des Grals: Entwarfe arteigener Religiositat im Spektrum von volkischer Bewegung, Lebensform, Okkultismus, Neuheidentum und Jugendbewegung (Schwalbach: Wochenschau, 2009). The connections between anthroposophy and ecofascism have been a primary subject of my own subsequent research, and I have detailed these connections elsewhere. See above all my article ''Anthroposophy and Ecofascism" and its sequel, "The Art of Avoiding History" as well as two further articles co-authored with my colleague Peter Zegers, ''Anthroposophy and its Defenders" and "The Janus Face of Anthroposophy," all available at www. social-ecology.org. For a more recent summary of the current state of research see Peter Staudenmaier, "Der deutsche Geist am Scheideweg: Anthroposophen in Auseinandersetzung mit volkischer Bewegung und Nationalsozialismus" in Uwe Puschner, ed., Die Volkischreligiose Bewegung im Nationalsozialismus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming 2012). See also Jutta Ditfurth, Entspannt in die Barbarei: Esoterik, (Oko- )Faschismus und Biozentrismus (Hamburg: Konkret, 1996); Peter Bieri, Wurzelrassen, Erzengel und Volksgeister: Die Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners und die Waldorfpadagogik (Hamburg: Konkret, 2005); Ingolf Christiansen, Rainer Fromm and Hartmut Zinser, Brennpunkt Esoterik (Hamburg 2006); Helmut Zander, Anthroposophie in Deutschland: Theosophische Weltanschauung und gesellschaftliche Praxis 1884-1945 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007).

18. Pagan Liberation League, "Political Positions Outlined," January 7, 2000, copy in my possession. For context see Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 312-13, on explicit neo-pagan support for "ecofascism" and blood and soil politics. From the point of view of liberal and left neo-pagans, these pro- Nazi variants of paganism undoubtedly seem marginal, but they are not therefore neglible.

19. A particularly relevant example is the pamphlet by Kerry Bolton, Rudolf Steiner & The Mystique of Blood & Soil: The Volkisch Views of the Founder of Anthroposophy (Paraparaumu: Renaissance Press, 1999). Bolton lauds Steiner's contributions to the ecological strands of Nazism and notes that "racial evolution is the very basis of Anthroposophical teachings on human spiritual development." (14) He also writes: "the Jewish preoccupation with 'measure, number and weight' naturally finds their emphasis on pursuits of a commercial nature, rather than those requiring spiritual impetus, such as the arts. Judaism is therefore seen by Steiner as materialistic, rooted in the physical, and its by-products are both capitalism and its mirror image, Marxism/Communism. His connection of Marxism and materialism with Judaism is another major belief he shared with the volkisch movement of the time." (12) Bolton's pamphlet on Steiner received a very favorable review by prominent neo-fascist Troy Southgate in his journal Synthesis in 2001.

20. See the instructive study by Graham Macklin, "Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction" Patterns of Prejudice 39 (2005), 301-26. For North American viewpoints see My Enemy's Enemy: Essays on globalization, fascism and the struggle against capitalism (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2001) and Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2002). For illuminating context from an Italian perspective see Piero Ignazi, Il polo escluso: Profilo storico del Movimento Sociale Italiano (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), 190-91, and Dino Cofrancesco, "Faschismus: rechts oder links?" in Karl Dietrich Bracher and Leo Valiani, eds., Faschismus und Natiollalsozialismus (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 41-106.

21. As in Germany, although the environmental strands in Italian Fascism were often overshadowed by countervailing tendencies toward industrialization and increasing mechanization in agriculture, the proto-ecological aspects of Fascist thought and policy should not be overlooked. For a range of perspectives compare Gustavo Corni, "Die Agrarpolitik des Faschismus: Ein Vergleich zwischen Deutschland und Italien" Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fur deutsche Geschichte 17 (1988),391-423; Alexander Nutzenadel, Landwirtschaft, Staat und Autarkie: Agrarpolitik im faschistischen Italien (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1997); Mauro Stampacchia, 'Ruralizzare L'ltalia!' Agricoltura e bonifiche tra Mussolini e Serpieri (Milan: Angeli, 2000); James Sievert, The Origins of Nature Conservation in Italy (New York Lang, 2000), 193-214; Fabrizio Marasti, Il fascismo rurale: Arrigo Serpieri e la bonifica integrale (Rome: Settimo Sigillo, 2001); Steen Bo Frandsen, '"The war that we prefer': The Reclamation of the Pontine Marshes and Fascist Expansion" in Gert Sorensen and Robert Mallett, eds., International Fascism 1919- 1945 (Cass, 2002), 69-82; Peter Staudenmaier, "Fascism" in Shepard Krech 1I1, John McNeill, and Carolyn Merchant, eds., Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (Routledge, 2004), 517-21; Mauro Stampacchia, "Dalla bonifica alla guerra: la politica agraria del fascismo" in Angelo Moioli, ed., Can la vanga e col moschetto: Ruralita, ruralismo e vita quotidiana nella RSI (Venice: Marsilio, 2006), 103-11; Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "A Brief History of Access Rights and Environmental Conflicts in Fascist Italy" in Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall, eds., Nature and History in Modern Italy (Ohio University Press, 2010), 141-58. For an indication of the continuing interest in the topic on the contemporary Italian far right see the preface by Enzo Erra to Marasti, Il fascismo rurale, 5-11.

22. Giuseppe Tassinari, Ten Years of Integral Land-Reclamation under the Mussolini Act (Faenza: Fratelli Lega, 1939), 14. This connection between the "return to the soil" and the "health of the race" was reiterated in Fascist publications; see e.g. "La mostra delle bonifiche" Giornale d'Italia, July 17, 1938, 8, and "La bonifica pontina e la politica razzista" Giornale d'Italia, August 10, 1938, 2.

23. Cesare Longobardi, Land-Reclamation in Italy: Rural Revival in the Building of a Nation (London: King, 1936),3. The concurrent "battle of grain," however, involved increased use of fertilizers and machinery.

24. Luciano Chimelli, "Prefazione all'edizione italiana" to Giovanni Schomerus, Il metodo di coltivazione biologico-dinamico (Pergine: Torgler, 1934), xx. Cf. Luciano Chimelli, Della lavorazione del tareno (Pergine: Torgler, 1941), and Chimelli, Del governo dei concimi organici (Trent: Edizioni Mutilati e Invalidi, 1942). Chimelli was an anthroposophist and the primary representative of biodynamic agriculture in Fascist Italy.

25. Aldo Pavari, "Die Wiederbewaldung des Appenins" Demeter, February 1940, 13-17; for a similar celebration of Fascist environmental policy see Gerhard Reinboth, "Die italienischen Urbarmachungen" Demeter, July 1940, 66-67.

26. For background on the Thule Society cf. Hermann Gilbhard, Die Thule- Gesellschaft: Vom okkulten Mummenschanz zum Hakenkreuz (Munich: Kiessling, 1994) and Detlev Rose, Die Thule-Gesellschaft: Legende, Mythos, Wirklichkeit (Tubingen: Grabert, 1994).

27. My characterization of Hess as a Steinerite was based in part on the extent to which he structured his personal dietary and health choices around anthroposophical beliefs and biodynamic practices. My current view is that Hess's occult interests were too diffuse to be specifically identified as anthroposophical, and that he is better seen as a sympathizer of anthroposophy and the major sponsor of anthroposophical activities during the Nazi era, but not as an anthroposophist himself.

28. Gangolf Hubinger, "Die monistische Bewegung" in Hubinger, Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um 1900 vol. II (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 1997), 246-59. See also Frank Simon-Ritz, "Die freigeistige Bewegung im Kaiserreich" in Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus Ulbricht, eds., Handbuch zur 'Volkischen Bewegung' 1871-1918 (Munich: Saur, 1996), 208-23; Andreas Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Burgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Offentlichkeit, 1848-1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg. 1998); Matthias Pilger-Strohl, "Eine deutsche Religion' Die freireligiose Bewegung - Aspekte ihrer Beziehung zum volkischen Milieu" in Stefanie von Schnurbein and Justus Ulbricht, eds., Volkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne: Entwurfe "arteigener" Glaubenssysteme seit der Jahrhundertwende (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2001), 342-66.

29. Major studies include Burkhardt Riechers, "Nature Protection during National Socialism" Historical Social Research 21 (1996), 34-56; Karl Ditt, "The Perception and Conservation of Nature in the Third Reich" Planning Perspectives 15 (2001),161-87; Joachim Radkau and Frank Uekotter, eds., Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003); Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity 1885-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2004); Franz- Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ohio University Press, 2005); Frank Uekoetter, The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2006); Willi Oberkrome, "Erhaltung und Gestaltung: Bemerkungen zu Theorie und Praxis des Naturschutzes im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland" in Hans-Werner Frohn and Friedemann Schmoll, eds., Natur und Staat: Staatlicher Naturschutz in Deutschland 1906-2006 (Bonn: Bundesamt fur Naturschutz, 2006), 315-41; Frank Uekotter, "Green Nazis? Reassessing the Environmental History of Nazi Germany" German Studies Review 30 (2007), 267-87. Balanced overviews of environmental endeavors in Nazi Germany can be found in David Blackbourn, "Race and Reclamation: National Socialism in Germany and Europe" in Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: Norton, 2006), 251-309; Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 260-65, and William Markham, Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008), 70-80.

30. See e.g. the editors' introduction to Bruggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis, 15. For overviews of the recent historiography see David Motadel, "The German Nature Conservation Movement in the Twentieth Century" Journal of Contemporary History 43 (2008), 137-53; Deborah Coen, "The Greening of German History" Isis 99 (2008),142- 48; Marc Landry, "How Brown were the Conservationists? Naturism, Conservation, and National Socialism, 1900-1945" Contemporary European History 19 (20 I0),83-93; and the forum on "The Nature of German Environmental History" in German History 27 (2009), 113-30.

31. For thorough historical background see Andreas Knaut, Zuruck zur Natur! Die Wurzeln der Okologiebewegung (Bonn: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Naturschutz, 1993) and Jost Hermand, Old Dreams of a New Reich: Volkish Utopias and National Socialism (Indiana University Press, 1993). For recent research on the various cultural precursors I briefly examined see Thomas Vordermayer, "Die Rezeption Ernst Moritz Arndts in Deutschland" Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 58 (2010), 483-508; Andrea Zinnecker, Romantik, Rock und Kamisol: Volkskunde auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich - Die Riehl-Rezeption (Munster: Waxmann, 1996); Sabine Weissler, Fokus Wandervogel: Der Wandervogel in seinen Beziehungen zu den Reformbewegungen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Marburg: Jonas, 2001); Ulrich Herrmann, ed., "Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit": Der Wandervogel in der deutschen Jugendbewegung (Weinheim: Juventa, 2006).

32. An empirically detailed example is John Alexander Williams, Turning to Nature in Germany: Hiking, Nudism, and Conservation, 1900-1940 (Stanford University Press, 2007). Williams' approach is more complex than its reception would suggest; much of the book's argument is nuanced and perceptive. See also John Alexander Williams, "'The Chords of the German Soul are Tuned to Nature': The Movement to Preserve the Natural Heimat from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich" Central European History 29 (1996), 339-84. Williams' book additionally contains important material on socialist variants of naturism in early twentieth century Germany, which along with anarchist and other radical approaches to environmental questions constitute a significant counterweight to the right-wing versions of 'turning to nature' examined here.

33. Dieter Buse, review of Williams, Turning to Nature in Germany, H-Net, March 16, 2009.

34. Edward Ross Dickinson, "Not So Scary After All? Reform in Imperial and Weimar Germany" Central European History 43 (2010), 162.

35. Cf. William Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904-1918 (University of Michigan Press, 1997); Thomas Rohkramer, Eine andere Moderne? Zivilisationskritik, Natur und Technik in Deutschland 1880-1933 (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1999); Kevin Repp, Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890-1914 (Harvard University Press, 2000); Matthew Jefferies, "Lebensreform: A Middle-Class Antidote to Wilhelminism?" in Geoff Eley and James Retallack, eds., Wilhelminism and its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism, and the Meanings of Reform, 1890-1930 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 91-106.

36. See Wolfgang Krabbe, "'Die Weltanschauung der Deutschen Lebensreformbewegung ist der Nationalsozialismus': Zur Gleichschaltung einer Alternativstromung im Dritten Reich" Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte 71 (1989), 431-61; Uwe Puschner, "Lebensreform und volkische Weltanschauung" in Kai Buchholz, ed., Die Lebensreform: Entwurfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900 (Darmstadt: Hausser, 2001), 175-78; Ulrich Linse, "Volkisch-rassische Siedlungen der Lebensreform" in Puschner, Schmitz, and Ulbricht, eds., Handbuch zur 'Volkischen Bewegung', 397-410; Gangolf Hubinger, "Der Verlag Eugen Diederichs in Jena: Wissenschaftskritik, Lebensreform und volkische Bewegung" Geschichte und Gesellschaft 22 (1996), 31-45; Oliver Piecha, "Anmerkungen zum Verhaltnis zwischen Lebensreform und volkischem Fundamentalismus" in Sabine Kruse and Jurgen-Wolfgang Goette, eds., Von Ascona bis Eden: Alternative Lebensformen (Lubeck: Erich-Muhsam-Gesellschaft, 2006),118-58; Willi Oberkrome, "Stamm und Landschaft: Heimatlicher Tribalismus und die Projektionen einer 'volkischen Neuordnung' Deutschlands 1920-1950" in Wolfgang Hardtwig, ed., Ordnungen in der Krise: Zur politischen Kulturgeschichte Deutschlands 1900-1933 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 69-94; Wolfgang Krabbe, Gesellschaftsveranderung durch Lebensreform: Strukturmerkmale einer sozialreformerischen Bewegung im Deutschland der Industrialisierungsperiode (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974); Janos Frecot, "Die Lebensreformbewegung" in Klaus Vondung, ed., Das wilhelminische Bildungsburgertum: Zur Sozialgeschichte seiner Ideen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), 138-52; Eva Barlosius, Naturgemasse Lebensfuhrung: Zur Geschichte der Lebensreform um die Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997); Janos Frecot, Johann Friedrich Geist, and Diethart Kerbs, Fidus, 1868 - 1948: Zur asthetischen Praxis burgerlicher Fluchtbewegungen (Hamburg: Rogner & Bernhard, 1997); Diethart Kerbs and Jurgen Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880-1933 (Wuppertal: Hammer, 1998); Bernd Wedemeyer, '''Zum Licht': Die Freikorperkultur in der Wilhelminischen Ara und der Weimarer Republik zwischen volkischer Bewegung, Okkultismus und Neuheidentum" Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte 81 (1999), 173-97; Uwe Puschner, Die volkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich: Sprache, Rasse, Religion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001); Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, "Der neue Mensch": Korperkultur im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2004); Florentine Fritzen, Gesunder Leben: Die Lebensreformbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006); Stefan Breuer, Die Volkischen in Deutschland: Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008).

37. For a variety of viewpoints see Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Marlin Heidegger (Columbia University Press, 1990), Tom Rockmore, On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy (University of California Press, 1992), Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life (Harper Collins, 1993), Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Harvard University Press, 1993), Bernd Martin, ed., Martin Heidegger und das 'Dritte Reich' (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), Dieter Thoma, ed., Heidegger-Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Wirkung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003), Bernhard Taureck, ed., Politische Unschuld? In Sachen Martin Heidegger (Munich: Fink, 2008). Curiously, the best that Heidegger's defenders seem to be able to say about the political value of his philosophy is that it is hypothetically commensurable with "a commitment to orthodox liberal democracy." (Julian Young, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 5) Perhaps this should be cause for reflection among Heidegger's admirers on the left. Some critics of Heidegger fall into the obverse error by viewing his rejection of liberalism as Heidegger's cardinal sin, philosophically and politically, and concluding that the indelible taint of Heideggerianism ruins the work of thinkers as diverse as Marcuse, Arendt, Sartre, Jonas, Lowith, and Levinas. What might help move the debate forward is a philosophically informed and politically radical critique of Heidegger's ideas as a specific instance of German right-wing thought, a critique that is satisfied neither with conformist liberalism nor with vacuous theoretical eclecticism.

38. Cf. Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (Northwestern University Press, 1973), Pierre Bourdieu, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger (Stanford University Press, 1991), Charles Bambach, Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks (Cornell University Press, 2003), Daniel Morat, Von der Tat zur Gelassenheit: Konservatives Denkell bei Martin Heidegger, Ernst Junger und Friedrich Georg Junger 1920-1960 (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2007).

39. Consider, for example, the contrasts between Robert Richards' work and Richard Weikart's work. Weikart, an intelligent design proponent, has produced historical scholarship which for all its flaws rightly points to the racist strands in Haeckel's thought, while Richards' otherwise impeccable scholarship badly misjudges this point, despite the fact that Richards' work is of much less dubious provenance than Weikart's; Richards' argument amounts to an apologia for and indeed denial of Haeckel's antisemitism and racism. Cf. Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave, 2004), Robert Richards, The Tragic Sense Of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and Robert Richards, "Ernst Haeckel's Alleged Anti-Semitism and Contributions to Nazi Biology" Biological Theory 2 (2007), 97-103. For an earlier version of the apologetic approach to Haeckel see Alfred Kelly, The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981). More informative treatments of Haeckel's racial views can be found in Jurgen Sandmann, Der Bruch mit der humanitaren Tradition: die Biologisierung der Ethik bei Ernst Haeckel und anderen Darwinisten seiner Zeit (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1990), Uwe Hossfeld, Geschichte der biologischen Anthropologie in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 144-59, and John Haller, "The Species Problem: Nineteenth-Century Concepts of Racial Inferiority in the Origin of Man Controversy" American Anthropologist 72 (1970), 1319-29.

40. The second edition of Gasman's The Scientific Origins Of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2004) reprints the original text unrevised but includes a substantial new introduction responding to criticisms. Gasman's other book, Haeckel's Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology (New York: Lang, 1998), contains a wealth of important information though its arguments are often highly overstated and oversimplified. As Roger Griffin notes, Haeckel's Monism "was just one of many totalizing cosmologies of decadence and rebirth which helped shape the cultural climate of the fin-de-siecle in which fascism's palingenetic fantasies first crystallized as a rudimentary political vision." (Griffin, "fascism" in Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, 643) For further context cf. Jackson and Weidman, Race, Racism, and Science, 85-88 and 120-25; Gunter Altner, "Der Sozialdarwinismus" in Altner, ed., Der Darwinismus: Die Geschichte einer Theorie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), 95-99; Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Paul Crook, "Social Darwinism: The Concept" History of European Ideas 22 (1996), 261-74; Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Richard Evans, "In Search of German Social Darwinism: The History and Historiography of a Concept" in Manfred Berg and Geoffrey Cocks, eds., Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1997),55-79; Paul Weindling, "Dissecting German Social Darwinism: Historicizing the Biology of the Organic State" Science in Context II (1998), 619-37; Kurt Bayertz, "Darwinismus als Politik: Zur Genese des Sozialdarwinismus in Deutschland 1860-1900" in Erna Aescht, ed., Weltratsel und Lebenswunder: Ernst Haeckel - Werk, Wirkung und Folgen (Linz: Oberosterreichisches Landesmuseum, 1998), 229-88; Uwe Hossfeld, "Haeckelrezeption im Spannungsfeld von Monismus, Sozialdarwinismus und Nationalsozialismus" History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 21 (1999), 195-213; Peter Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea (University of California Press, 2003); Andre Pichot, The Pure Society: From Darwin to Hitler (Verso, 2009); Peter Bowler, "The Eclipse of Pseudo-Darwinism? Reflections on Some Recent Developments in Darwin Studies" History of Science 47 (2009), 431-43.

41 Some of the most insightful historians of the German right have raised significant reservations about a "culturalist approach" to understanding the heterogeneous assortment of right-wing groups and worldviews in the decades before 1933. I see the topic as a prime opportunity for integrating intellectual and institutional history. For a trenchant critique of several common frameworks see Geoff Eley, "Origins, Post-Conservatism, and the History of the Right" Central European History 43 (2010), 327- 39. A superb overview can be found in Stefan Breuer, Ordnungen der Ungleichheit - die deutsche Rechte im Widerstreit ihrer Ideen 1871-1945 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001). In addition to the studies cited above and in the original edition of Ecofascism, English-speaking readers interested in the broad cultural background may consult the following works: Detlev Peukert, "Nazi Germany and the pathologies and dislocations of modernity" in Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany (Yale University Press, 1987),243-49; Hermann Glaser, The Cultural Roots of National Socialism (University of Texas Press, 1978); Roderick Stackelberg, Idealism Debased: From volkisch Ideology to National Socialism (Kent State University Press, 1981); Gary Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890-1933 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and tile Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984); Martin Green, Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900-1920 (University Press of New England, 1986); Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism; The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935 (New York University Press, 1992); Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton University Press, 1996); Colin Riordan, ed., Green Thought in German Culture: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (University of Wales Press, 1997); Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930 (University of Chicago Press, 2003); George Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (University of Chicago Press, 2004); Christof Mauch, ed., Nature in German History (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004); Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller, eds., Germany." Nature: New Approaches to Environmental History (Rutgers University Press, 2005).

42. See e.g. Thomas Rohkramer, "Bewahrung, Neugestaltung, Restauration? Konservative Raum- und Heimatvorstellungen in Deutschland 1900- 1933" in Hardtwig, ed., Ordnungen in der Krise, 66.

43. Hermand, Grune Utopien in Deutschland, 112-18. The term 'ecofascism', on the other hand, can be found in Murray Bookchin's work from the 1970s and was already current in the literature when the original edition of this book appeared, and had in fact been used a decade earlier by left environmentalists critical of the authoritarian and Malthusian strands in contemporary ecological politics; see the section titled "Ecofascism" in David Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism (Routledge, 1986), 204-13.

44. Robert Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton University Press, 1999), 5.

45. On the status of animals in Nazi ideology and practice see the sophisticated study by Boria Sax, Animals in the Third Reich (Continuum, 2000). A judicious appraisal of Hitler's vegetarianism is available in Fritzen, Gesunder Leben, 227-29 and 219; see also 64-106 on the history of Lebensreform efforts between 1933 and 1945, particularly vegetarianism and natural healing methods. Nazi officials followed a similar course with vegetarian organizations as they did with other Lebensreform groups, co-opting some while suppressing others. Several vegetarian societies received official sanction in 1933 and 1934 and were incorporated into the Nazi Lebensreform apparatus; other vegetarian groups were either folded into the officially sanctioned ones or shut down. Nazi Lebensreform organs continued to promote vegetarianism into the late 1930s. On Nazi support for natural healing cf. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Harvard University Press, 1988), 223-50; Walter Wuttke- Groneberg, "Nationalsozialistische Medizin: Volks- und Naturheilkunde auf 'neuen Wegen'" in Heinz Abholz, ed., Alternative Medizin (Berlin 1983), 27-50; Detlef Bothe, Neue Deutsche Heilkunde 1933-1945 (Husum 1991); Doris Kratz, Die Heilkunde in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik - Die 'angepasste' Medizin in der Zeit der NS-Diktatur (Berlin 2004); Daniela Angetter, "Alternativmedizin kontra Schulmedizin im Nationalsozialismus" in Judith Hahn, ed., Medizin im Nationalsozialismus und das System der Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt 2005); Uwe Heyll, Wasser, Fastell, Luft und Licht: Die Geschichte der Naturheilkunde in Deutschland (Frankfurt 2006), 229-69.

46. Thomas Zeller, "Molding the Landscape of Nazi Environmentalism: Alwin Seifert and the Third Reich" in Bruggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis, 148. See also Zeller, "'Ganz Deutschland sein Garten': Alwin Seifert und die Landschaft des Nationalsozialismus" in Radkau and Uekotter, eds., Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus, 273-307; Charlotte Reitsam, Das Konzept der 'bodenstandigen Gartenkunst' Alwin Seiferts (Frankfurt: Lang, 2001); Gert Groning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Grune Biographien: Biographisches Handbuch, zur Landschaftsarchitektur des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Berlin: Patzer, 1997), 361-63; Franz Seidler, Fritz Todt: Baumeister des Dritten Reiches (Berlin: Herbig, 1986), 116-20, 279-85; Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, "Biodynamischer Gartenbau, Landschaftsarchitcktur und Nationalsozialismus" Das Gartenamt, September 1993, 590-95, and October 1993, 638-42; Willi Oberkrome, Deutsche Heimat: Nationale Konzeption und regionale Praxis von Naturschutz, Landschaftsgestaltung und Kulturpolitik in Westfalen-Lippe und Thuringen (1900-1960) (Paderborn: Schoningh, 2004).

47. Compare Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, "Political Landscapes and Technology: Nazi Germany and the Landscape Design of the Reichsautobahnen" CELA Annual Conference Papers 1995; William Rollins, "Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85 (1995), 494-520; Dietmar Klenke, ''Autobahnbau und Naturschutz in Deutschland: Eine Liaison von Nationalpolitik, Landschaftspflege und Motorisierungsvision bis zur okologischen Wende der siebziger Jahre" in Matthias Frese and Michael Prinz, eds., Politische Zasuren und gesellschaftlicher Wandel im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1996),465-98; Jochen Zimmer, "Politische Landschaften: Reichsautobahnbau und Autobahnmalerei" in Christof Stracke, ed., Soziologie als Krisenwissenschaft (Munster: Lit, 1998), 206-19; Erhard Schutz, Mythos Reichsautobahn: Bau und Inszenierung der Strassen des Fuhrers 1933-1941 (Berlin: Links, 2000); Thomas Zeller, Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007); Charlotte Reitsam, Reichsautobahn-Landschaften im Spannungsfeld von Natur und Technik (Saarbrucken: Muller, 2009).

48. In a July 11, 1949 letter to the appeals court, Seifert claimed that he had been "unwillingly" made a member of the NSDAP, and his lawyer wrote on June 28, 1950 that Hess had enlisted Seifert in the party "without his knowledge." Both letters are in Seifert's file at the Staatsarchiv Munchen, Spruchkammerakte Ka. 1511. Documents from the Nazi era disprove these claims. On his December 18, 1940 application to the Reichsschrifttumskammer, for example, Seifert stated plainly that he was an NSDAP member; see Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BA), RK/BI85: 2300. Hess's letters to Seifert address him as "Lieber Parteigenosse Seifert," e.g. Rudolf Hess to Alwin Seifert, November 14, 1938, BA R58/6223/1: 318; see also Seifert to Hess, May 10, 1937, Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, Munich, ED 32/422/1952: 101. For context on Seifert's party membership see Reitsam, Das Konzept der 'bodenstandigen Gartenkunst' Alwin Seiferts, 21, 25- 26.

49. See the April 4, 1944 letter from the Organisation Todt to Seifert designating him an Einsatzleiter ("erster Generalsrang"), Staatsarchiv Munchen, Spruchkammerakte Ka. 1511. At his de-Nazification trial Seifert claimed that the promotion, granted to facilitate his work in German-occupied Italy, was reversed by higher authorities.

50. In addition to the texts cited in my chapter on the 'green wing: examples include Alwin Seifert,"Natur als harmonisches Ganzes" Leib und Leben, May 1937, 115-17; Seifert, "Von der Muttererde" Der Schulungsbrief: Das zentrale Monatsblatt der NSDAP, November 1938, 373-77; Seifert, "Die Zukunft der ostdeutschen Landschaft" Die Strasse, December 1939, 633- 36; Seifert, "Die lebensgesetzliche Landbauweise" Die Strasse, August 1940, 350; Seifert, "Die Wiedergeburt landschaftsgebundenen Bauens" Die Strasse, September 1941, 286-89; Seifert, "Uber naturnahen Gartenbau" Leib und Leben, August 1942, 67-69. For a detailed sense of Seifert's dual commitment to National Socialism and to organic agriculture see his May 1941 manifesto "Die bauerlich-unabhangige Landbauweise," Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter BAK), N1094/II/1.
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Re: Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons From the German Experience

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51. Groning and Wolschke-Bulmahn, Grune Biographien, 358. His publications include Max Karl Schwarz, "Biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise unter Berucksichtigung ihres Wertes fur den Gartengedanken" Gartenkunst, October 1930, 167-70; Schwarz, "Zum Siedlungsproblem" Demeter, October 1931, 180-85; Schwarz, Ein Weg zum praktischen Siedeln (Dusseldorf: Pflugschar-Verlag, 1933); Schwarz, "Betriebsorganismen an der Reichsautobahn" Die Strasse, December 1939, 659-62; Schwarz, "Zum Grunaufbau im ostdeutschen Raum" Die Strasse, April 1940, 150-54; Schwarz, "Zeitgemasse Gedanken uber Garten- und Landschaftsgestaltung" Gartenbau im Reich, June 1942, 94- 95; Schwarz, "Ein Vorschlag zur biologischen Regelung der stadtischen Abfallwirtschaft" Leib und Leben, December 1942, 108-09.

52. Schwarz reportedly converted Robert Ley's estate to biodynamic format; see Seifert to Darre, June 12, 1941, BAK N 1094/II/1. A further member of Seifert's coterie of landscape advocates, Hinrich Meyer-Jungclaussen, was also a supporter of biodynamics; cf. BA R58/6197/1: 194 and BA R58/6144/2: 109.

53. Cf. Gert Groning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Der Drang nach Osten: Zur Entwicklung der Landespflege im Nationalsozialismus und wahrend des Zweiten Weltkrieges in den "eingegliederten Ostgebieten" (Munich: Minerva, 1987); Marie-Luise Heuser, "Was grun begann endete blutigrot: Von der Naturromantik zu den Reagrarisierungs- und Entvolkerungsplanen der SA und SS" in Dieter Hassenpflug, ed., Industrialismus und Okoromantik: Geschichte und Perspektiven der Okologisierung (Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitats- Verlag, 1991), 43-64; Stefan Korner, Der Aufbruch der modernen Umweltplanung in der nationalsozialistischen Landespflege (Berlin: Technische Universitat, 1995); Michael Hartenstein, Neue Dorflandschajten: Nationalsozialistische Siedlungsplanung in den "eingegliederten Ostgebieten" 1939 bis 1944 (Berlin: Koster, 1998); Uwe Mai, Rasse und Raum: Agrarpolitik, Sozial- und Raumplanung im NS- Staat (Paderborn: Schoningh, 2002); Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Gert Groning, "Zum Verhaltnis von Landschaftsplanung und Nationalsozialismus: Dargestellt an Entwicklungen wahrend des Zweiten Weltkriegs in den 'eingegliederten Ostgebieten'" in Naturschutz hat Geschichte (Essen: Klartext, 2003), 163-92; Isabel Heinemann, "Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut": Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2003).

54. See Michael Imort, "'Eternal Forest - Eternal Volk': The Rhetoric and Reality of National Socialist Forest Policy" in Bruggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis, 43-72; Johannes Zechner, '''Die grunen Wurzeln unseres Volkes': Zur ideologischen Karriere des 'deutschen Waldes'" in Puschner and Grossmann, eds., Volkisch und national, I79-94; Heinrich Rubner, Deutsche Forstgeschichte 1933 -1945: Forstwirtschaft, Jagd und Umwelt im NS-Staat (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 1997); Robert Lee and Sabine Wilke, "Forest as Volk: Ewiger Wald and the Religion of Nature in the Third Reich" Journal of Social and Ecological Boundaries 1 (2005), 21-46; Johannes Zechner, "Ewiger Wald und ewiges Volk": Die Ideologisierung des deutschen Waldes im Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Technische Universitat, 2006); Oliver Rathkolb, Maria Wirth, and Michael Wladika, Die "Reichsforste" in Osterreich 1938-1945: Arisierung, Restitution, Zwangsarbeit und Entnazifizierung (Vienna: Bohlau, 2010). For sources from the Nazi era see Franz Heske, German Forestry (Yale University Press, 1938) and Adalbert Ebner, German Forests: Treasures of a Nation (New York: German Library of Information, 1940).

55. For thoughtful general reflections on the politics of organic agriculture see Pernille Kaltoft, "Values about Nature in Organic Farming Practice and Knowledge" Sociologia Ruralis 39 (1999),39-53; Jack Kloppenburg, Sharon Lezberg, Kathryn De Master, George Stevenson. John Hendrickson. "Tasting Food, Tasting Sustainability: Defining the Attributes of an Alternative Food System with Competent. Ordinary People" Human Organization 59 (2000), 177-86; Timothy Vos, "Visions of the middle landscape: Organic farming and the politics of nature" Agriculture and Human Values 17 (2000), 245-56; Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (University of California Press. 2004); Steven Stoll, "The Smallholder's Dilemma" Technology and Culture 47 (2006), 808-13; Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture took on the Food Industry (Cornell University Press, 2007); Julie Guthman. "Commentary on Teaching Food: Why I am Fed Up with Michael Pollan et al" Agriculture and Human Values 24 (2007). 261-64; Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (New York: Melville House, 2008). 244-48 and 305-10; Jordan Kleiman, "Local Food and the Problem of Public Authority" Technology and Culture 50 (2009), 399-417; Matthew Reed, Rebels for the Soil: the Rise of the Global Organic Food and Farming Movement (London: Earthscan, 2010); as well as two unpublished texts: the 2008 essay "The Politics of Organic Farming" by Laura Sayre of Yale University's Program in Agrarian Studies, and the 2009 study "Going Loco: The Cultural and Political Meaning of the U.S. Local Foods Movement" by my colleague Chaia Heller of the Institute for Social Ecology. For a recent argument linking sustainable agricultural initiatives to broader struggles for social and ecological justice see Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, "Organic and Beyond" Counterpunch, January 14, 2011.

56. The initial reception of Bramwell's book was partly positive; see e.g. the review of Blood and Soil by John Farquharson in German History 3 (1986), 95-97. More critical appraisals of her work include Gustavo Corni and Herbert Gies, 'Blut und Boden': Rassenideologie und Agrarpolitik im Staat Hitlers (Idstein: Schulz-Kirchner, 1994); Piers Stephens, "Blood, Not Soil: Anna Bramwell and the Myth of 'Hitler's Green Party'" Organization & Environment 14 (2001), 173-87; Gesine Gerhard, "Richard Walther Darre - Naturschutzer oder 'Rassenzuchter'?" in Radkau and Uekotter, eds., Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus, 257-71; Gesine Gerhard, "Breeding Pigs and People for the Third Reich: Richard Walther Darre's Agrarian Ideology" in Bruggemeier, Cioc, and Zeller, eds., How Green were the Nazis, 129-46. For a keen critique of Bramwell's book from a politically radical perspective see the pamphlet by J. Sakai, The Green Nazi: An investigation into fascist ecology (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2002). The broader literature on Nazi agricultural policy is extensive; see J.E. Farquharson, The Plough and the Swastika: The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany, 1928-45 (London: Sage, 1976); Friedrich Grundmann, Agrarpolitik im 'Dritten Reich' (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1979); Jan Smit, Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums: Innere Kolonisation im Dritten Reich, (Gesamthochschule Kassel, 1983); Gustavo Corni, Hitler and the Peasants: Agrarian Policy of The Third Reich, 1930-1939 (New York: Berg, 1990); Daniela Munkel, Nationalsozialistische Agrarpolitik und Bauernalltag (Frankfurt: Campus, 1996); Gustavo Corni and Herbert Gies, Brot-Butter-Kanonen: Die Ernahrungswirtschaft in Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers (Berlin: Akademie, 1997); Christian Bose, Die Entstehung und Fortbildung des Reichserbhofgesetzes (Frankfurt: Lang, 2008). An excellent overview in English, with important context on Darre's role in particular, is available in Adam Tooze, "Saving the Peasants" in Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Viking, 2006), 166-99.

57. Woodruff Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 1996), 243; see also Clifford Lovin, "R. Walther Darre, Nazi Agricultural Policy, and Preparation for War" Occasional Papers in German Studies 7 (1995); Andrea D'Onofrio, "Rassenzucht und Lebensraum: Zwei Grundlagen im Blut- und Boden- Gedanken von Richard Walther Darre" Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft 49 (2001), 141-57; and Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 198-99. Bramwell's claims along these lines, and her approving portrait of the Nazi agricultural minister, have nonetheless found fertile ground among other admirers of the far right; for an equally naive view see the entry on Darre by Michael Moynihan in Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, 450-51. Blood and Soil relied centrally and credulously on information supplied to Bramwell by Darre's attorney Hans Merkel, himself an anthroposophist and veteran promoter of biodynamic agriculture.

58. Citing her own interviews with unnamed "Anthroposophist members of Darre's staff" as a source on "relations between followers of Steiner and the regime" (Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century, 270), for example, she identified Ludolf Haase and Antony Ludovici as Nazi officials who supported biodynamic agriculture. Bramwell appears to have confused J.W. Ludowici, a Nazi agricultural specialist, with Anthony Ludovici, a British Nazi sympathizer, agrarian ideologue, and admirer of Darre. I have been unable to find corroboration for sympathies toward biodynamic agriculture on the part of either Haase or Ludowici (the German official), though it is always possible that new evidence will come to light. Biodynamic agriculture was not, of course, the only variety of organic farming vying for attention in Nazi Germany, but it was the most successful. Competing approaches included a form of natural farming developed by Hermann Denstadt which abjured artificial fertilizers in favor of "living bacterial soil" and had the support of Julius Streicher, and the method of "biological cultivation" promoted by Ewald Konemann in his journal Bebauet die Erde.

59 See e.g. Uekoetter, The Green and the Brown, 203. Even anarchists have accepted this inaccurate claim at face value; see the review of Uekoetter's book by Jeff Shantz in the Canadian Journal of History 43 (2008), 313-14. Uekoetter's recent work is more equivocal on this point; cf. Frank Uekotter, Die Wahrheit ist auf dem Feld: Eine Wissensgeschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 268-69.

60. Overviews of Darre's thought are available in Clifford Lovin, "Blut und Boden: The Ideological Basis of the Nazi Agricultural Program" Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967), 279-88; Mathias Eidenbenz, "Blut und Boden": Zu Funktion und Genese der Metaphern des Agrarismus und Biologismus in der nationalsozialistischen Bauernpropaganda R.W Darre's (Frankfurt: Lang, 1993); Frank-Lothar Kroll, Utopie als Ideologie: Geschichtsdenken und politisches Handeln im Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1998), 157-205; D'Onofrio, "Rassenzucht und Lebensraum." For further background on biodynamic agriculture cf. Holger Kirchmann, "Biological Dynamic Fanning - An Occult Form of Alternative Agriculture?" Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 7 (1994), 173-87; Zander, Anthroposophie in Deutschland, 1579-1607; Reinhard Farkas, "Alternative Landwirtschaft / Biologischer Landbau" in Kerbs and Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen, 301- 13; Uekotter, Die Wahrheit ist auf dem Feld, 232-40 and 413-22. General historical context is available in Gunter Vogt, "The Origins of Organic Farming" in William Lockeretz, ed., Organic Farming: An international History (Oxfordshire: CABI, 2007), 9-29.

61. For an account of the steps leading toward the reversal in Darre's views on biodynamic farming see Georg Halbe, "Bericht uber die Entwicklung der Beziehungen zwischen dem Stabsamt des Reichsbauernfuhrers und dem Reichsverband fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise" (BAK N1094/ II/1), and Erhard Bartsch's June 1941 SD interrogation, BA R58/6223/1: 239 and BA R58/6223/1: 299-305. For Darre's own official version see his June 20, 1940 announcement as Reich Peasant Leader, BA NS 15/304: 57046.

62. See Erhard Bartsch to Alfred Baeumler, January 13, 1939, BA NS 15/304: 57128, as well as Bartsch's 1939 correspondence with Goring's office in BA R 9349/2.

63. "Um die biologisch-dynamische Dungungsweise: Eine Erklarung des Reichsernahrungsministers" Die Landware, January 20, 1940, 2. See also Darre to Rosenberg, July 24, 1940, BA NS 8/173: 44.

64. Darre to Seifert, May 28, 1941, BAK N1094/II/1. Darre's extremely friendly 1941 correspondence with Seifert shows that by this point both figures viewed one another as allies in promoting biodynamics. For specific examples of Darre's wide-ranging efforts on behalf of biodynamics see the "Geschaftsbericht 1939/40" of the Reichsverband fur biologischdynamische Wirtschaftsweise, BA R58/6197/1: 141-43.

65. On Backe see Gesine Gerhard, "Food and Genocide: Nazi Agrarian Politics in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union" Contemporary European History 18 (2009), 45-65; Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 538-51; and Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernahrung, Volkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburger Edition, 1998), 13-21 and 189-223. For Backe's vehement opposition to biodynamics see his 1933- 42 correspondence with Darre in BAK N1094/II/20.

66. See e.g. Darre's official statement as Minister of Agriculture from May 19, 1941 in BA NS 26/947, and compare his June 7, 1941 memorandum to his close collaborators, marked "confidential," in BAK N1094/II/1d.

67. The main association was the Verein fur Bauerntumskunde, which campaigned for biodynamic farming from 1939 onward and was re-named Gesellschaft der Freunde des deutschen Bauerntums in October 1940, with Darre as president throughout. The association was coordinated by Wilhelm Kinkelin, Karl August Rust, and Hermann Reischle, all proponents of organic agriculture. For details see Kinkelin to Reischle, November 27, 1939, and Rust to Seifert, June 16, 1941, BAK N1094/II/1. Further biodynamic supporters on Darre's staff included Wilhelm Rauber, Gunther Pacyna, Reinhard Ohnesorge, and Wilhelm Driehaus.

68. Darre, "Anordnung fur den personlichen Stab" June 7, 1941, BAK N1094/II/1d.

69. On Otto Strasser as ecofascist see the entry on him by Patrick Moreau in Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann, eds., Die braune Elite (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), 294-96; for further context cf. Andrea D'Onofrio, Ruralismo e storia nel Terzo Reich: Il caso "Odal" (Naples: Liguori, 1997); Joshua Hagen, "The Most German of Towns: Creating an Ideal Nazi Community in Rothenburg ob der Tauber" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (2004), 207-27; Bernhard Dietz, "Countryside-versus-City in European Thought: German and British Anti-Urbanism between the Wars" The European Legacy 13 (2008), 801-14; Shelley Baranowski, The Sanctity of Rural Life: Nobility, Protestantism, and Nazism in Weimar Prussia (Oxford University Press, 1995). It is important to keep in mind that the images of the 'peasantry' and 'peasant values' exalted in the works of Darre and Strasser et al. were ideologies which had little to do with the actual lives of rural working people but were largely an invention of disaffected figures from quite different backgrounds projecting their own longings and resentments onto agrarian contexts.

70. For a representative example see Von Ehrlich, "Bauerntum und Landschuljahr" N.S. Lehrerbund Mitteilungsblatt Gau Koln-Aachen, March 1, 1934, 68-69.

71. Details on Reischle's career can be found in BA SSO/21B: 1020-1137 and BA DS/G131: 2475-2492; for context cf. Heinemann, Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut, 88-89,114-16,127-28,631. His titles included Hauptamtsleiter im Amt fur Agrarpolitik bei der Reichsleitung der NSDAP, Reichskommissar im Reichsernahrungsministerium, Stabsamtsfuhrer im Reichsnahrstand, and Fuhrer im Personlichen Stab des Reichsfuhrers-SS. For examples of his publications see Hermann Reischle, Reichsbauernfuhrer Darre: Der Kampfer um Blut und Bodell (Berlin 1933); Reischle, "Kapitalismus als Nahrboden des Judentums" Odal, January 1937, 530-41; Reischle, "Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums" Neues Bauerntum, June 1939; Reischle, Nationalsozialistische Agrarpolitik (Munster 1941).

72. Merkel's title was Stabshauptabteilungsleiter im Stabsamt des Reichsbauernfuhrers; in 1935 he was also named Leiter der Stabshauptabteilung im Reichsnahrstand. He initially applied to join the SS in 1935 but failed the physical examination; he was made an SS officer in 1936 on special orders from Himmler. For further details see his handwritten Lebenslauf from March 8, 1938 in BA RS/D5477: 311, as well as his personnel files in BA SSO/310A:74-114 and BA DS/G179: 2735-2762.

73. In addition to his numerous articles in Odal: Zeilschrift fur Blut und Boden see Hans Merkel, "Die Neugestaltung des Wirtschaftsrechts im Reichsnahrstand" Jahrbuch der nationalsozialistischen Wirtschaft 1937, 227 -37; Merkel, Agrarpolitik (Leipzig 1942); Merkel, Deutsches Bauernrecht (Leipzig 1944). 'The January 1940 issue of Odal praised Merkel's analysis of the changing agricultural situation as Germany defended itself against "the Jewish-plutocratic war."

74. The voluminous post-war correspondence between Merkel and Darre can be found in BAK N1094 1/2; Merkel's defense brief and related documents from Darre's Nuremberg trial are in BAK N1094I/1. Further details are contained in an unpublished post-war memoir by Merkel titled "Mein Lebensgang," recounting his career during the Third Reich and his role in defending Darre at Nuremberg. The memoir strongly downplays Merkel's own Nazi involvement, and many of its claims are controverted by archival evidence. I am indebted to Ute Merkel for providing a copy of this document.

75. See Halbe's handwritten Lebenslauf dated August 14, 1942, BA DS/A97: 660.

76. Georg Halbe, "Lebensgesetzlicher Landbau" Westermanns Monatshefte, November 1940, 128-30; on the book project see Halbe's August 1942 "Verzeichnis umfangreicherer Aufsatze" (BA DS/A97: 664).

77. Cf. Georg Halbe, "Zur neuen Getreideordnung" Deutschlands Erneuerung, September 1934, 552-56; Halbe, "Odal, das Lebensgesetz eines ewigen Deutschland" Odal, October 1935, 301-06; Halbe, "Goethes Naturanschauung und lebensgesetzlicher Landbau" Demeter, December 1940, 116-18; Halbe, "Die Reichsidee" Leib und Leben, November 1942, 89-91; Halbe, "Unsterblichkeit" Leib und Leben, March 1943,23; he also published in the Nationalsozialistische Landpost and the SS journal Das schwarze Korps.

78. Hermann Schneider, Schicksalsgemeinschaft Europa: Leben und Nahrung aus der europaischen Scholle (Breslau 1941); see especially 89-102 on biodynamic agriculture.

79 Hermann Schneider to Erhard Bartsch, December 8, 1940, with Schneider's manuscript "Grundung einer europaischen Hauptforschungsstatte fur Lebensforschung" (BA R9349/3/Sch); see also Schneider's December 9, 1939 letter to Himmler in the same file, detailing efforts to promote biodynamic farming, as well Schneider's May 19, 1941 letter to Darre containing a four-page clarion call for biodynamics under the title "Stellungnahme zur Frage der naturgesetzlichen Wirtschaftsweise" (BAK N 1094/I1/1).

80. According to an October 7, 1939 letter from the Wehrwirtschaftsstab beim Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to Reichshauptamtsleiter Rauber, Stabsamt des Reichsbauernfuhrers, the Wehrmacht high command supported "the biodynamic method of cultivation." (BA R58/6223/1: 331) Cf. Erhard Bartsch to Albert Friehe, October 9, 1939, BA R9349/2.

81. Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature, 9. A sophisticated analysis of this ideological convergence can be found in Andrea D'Onofrio, Razza, sangue e suolo: Utopie della razza e progetti eugenetici nel ruralismo nazista (Naples: Clio Press, 2007). Cf. Ulrich Linse, Zuruck o Mensch zur Mutter Erde: Landkommunen in Deutschland 1890-1933 (Munich: DTV, 1983), 327-39, and in English see the informative recent study by Corinna Treitel, "Nature and the Nazi Diet" Food and Foodways 17 (2009), 139-58.

82. In addition to the figures mentioned here, further supporters of biodynamics such as Karl August Rust and Rudi Peuckert served for years as officials of the SS Office of Race and Settlement.

83. Friehe joined the NSDAP in 1925 and was a candidate for the party in both of the 1932 Reichstag elections; in January 1932 he was appointed 'Fachreferent fur bauerliches Bildungswesen bei der Reichsleitung der NSDAP' and from February 1934 onward he was a 'standiger Mitarbeiter des Rassenpolitischen Amtes der NSDAP: Friehe was also 'Leiter der Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise' in Buckeburg in Saxony Cf. BA PK/A199: 2718, SA PK/C313: 1119-1178, and BA R9349/2/F.

84. See Herman Polzer, "Ein bauerliches Kulturideal: Zur Jahrestagung fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise in Bad Saarow" Leib und Leben, February 1939, 29-31, and Bert Becker, Georg Michaelis: Eine Biographie (Paderborn: Schoningh, 2007), 667.

85. Kurt Willmann, "Vom Wesen des deutschen Bauerntums" Demeter, August 1939, 147.

86. See Erhard Bartsch, "Betriebs-Autarkie" Demeter, March 1933, 41-45; Bartsch, Die biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise: Oberwindung des Materialismus in Landwirtschaft und Gartenbau (Dresden 1934); Bartsch, "Was ist biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise'" Natur und Kultur, April 1938, 117-18; Herman Polzer, "Reichstagung fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise" Leib und Leben, January 1936, 18-19. On the growth of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture see the November 1939 audit of the organization, BA R58/6197/1: 40-43; on the degree of Nazi support for the group see the "Geschaftsbericht 1935/36 des Reichsverbandes fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise" and the "Geschaftsbericht 1939/40" BA R58/6197/1: 107-09 and 141-43, as well as the report "Tagung des Reichsverbandes" in Demeter, December 1935, 205-06.

87. Cf. Oskar Kruger, "Neue Wege des Landbaues" Volkischer Beobachter, August 28, 1940, 7, a lengthy and glowing portrait of biodynamics, particularly Bartsch's estate; Wolfgang Clauss, "Lebensgesetzliche Landbauweise: Eindrucke von einer Besichtigung des Erbhofes Marienhohe bei Bad Saarow" Nationalsozialistische Landpost, July 26, 1940, 3-4; Edmund Sala, "Die Natur als Erzieher" Die Grune Post, November 24, 1940, 6, another fulsome article on biodynamics, pointing especially to the compatibility of organic agriculture with "our National Socialist plans"; and Kathe Wietfeld, "Volkskraft und Volksgesundheit" Gesundes Leben, March 1940, 60, which praises the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture, Demeter, and Weleda as contributors to the people's health.

88. Franz Zeno Diemer to Hermann Reischle, July 5, 1941, BAK N1094/ II/1. Diemer was a Luftwaffe officer and Nazi party official and an avid proponent of biodynamics.

89. See e.g. Erhard Bartsch, "Zuruck zum Agrarstaat" Demeter, September 1933, 163-64; Bartsch, "Haltet den Boden gesund!" Demeter, January 1938, 1; Franz Dreidax, "Heimatpflege und Landwirtschaft" Demeter, September 1933, 187-92; "Beitrag zum Autarkieproblem" Demeter, August 1933, 139-42; "Kulturschaffendes Bauerntum" Demeter, January 1941, 1-2. The journal's subtitle was Monatsschrift fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise.

90. Ernst Schaaf to Burgermeister der Stadt Reichenbach, July 6, 1937, BA R9349/1.

91. See Demeter July 1940, 64, October 1940, 99, and the opening articles in the September 1939 and 1940 issues.

92. Cf. Max Karl Schwarz, "Bildekrafte im Lebensraum der Landschaft" Demeter, April 1939, 59-66; Schwarz, Zur landschaftlichen Ausgestaltung der Strassen in Norddeutschland (Berlin: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1940); Erhard Bartsch, "Der Impuls der biologisch-dynamischen Wirtschaftsweise" Demeter, June 1937,93-95; Franz Dreidax, "Lebendiger Boden - ewiges Volk" Leib und Leben, October 1938, 199-205; Dreidax, "Gesundes Brot aus gesundem Boden" Leib und Leben, September 1940, 88; Franz Lippert, "Der Bauerngarten" Leib und Leben, June 1941, 80-81.

93 The 1938 ''Akten-Vermerk fur Herrn Hanns Georg Muller" (BA R9349/3/M) blames all the negative aspects of modern agriculture on "Jewish influences" and posits biodynamics as the antidote to such influences, touting Demeter's efforts to counter the harmful effects of the Jews.

94. Erhard Bartsch to Lotar Eickhoff, August 22,1937, BA R9349/2.

95. On Muller see Bothe, Neue Deutsche Heilkunde 1933-1945, 217-27; Fritzen, Gesunder Leben, 64-77 and 93-103; and Muller's own 1975 affidavit in Gilbhard, Die Thule-Gesellschaft, 243-47. On his extremely enthusiastic support for biodynamics see the minutes of Muller's May 14, 1939 meeting with biodynamic leaders in BA R 9349/2.

96. See the 1938 correspondence between Muller and the Reichsverband fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise in BA R9349/1; Muller also intervened with the national association of grain producers and the Reich Commissar for Price Regulation, among many others. Muller headed the Lebensreform bureau in the Sachverstandigenbeirat fur Volksgesundheit, part of the NSDAP Reichsleitung, acting as a loyal and enthusiastic ally of biodynamic concerns. The correspondence between Muller and the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture extends from 1934 to 1940. See also the numerous leiters from Bartsch to Muller in BA R9349/3/M.

97. Muller's publishing house, the Mullersche Verlagshandlung, produced works by anthroposophist, volkisch, organic, and environmentalist authors before, during, and after the Nazi era. Its biodynamic publications include Franz Dreidax, Das Bauen im Lebendigen: Eine Einfuhrung in die biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise (1939); Max Karl Schwarz, Obstbau unter Berucksichtigung der biologisch-dynamischen Wirtschaftsweise (1939); Franz Lippert, Zur Praxis des Heilpflanzenbaus (1939); Nicolaus Remer, Gesundheit und Leistung bei Haustieren (1940); Hellmut Bartsch and Franz Dreidax, Der lebendige Dunger (1941). Pro-biodynamic articles by leading Nazi Lebensreform advocates such as Herman Polzer, Eva Hauck and Fritz Hugo Hoffmann appeared regularly in Leib und Leben: Zeitschrift der Reformbewegung, edited and published by Muller.

98. See e.g. Robert Banfield, "Landwirtschaftliche Tagung fur biologisch- dynamische Wirtschaftsweise" Leib und Leben, January 1935, 17-19. Banfield was deputy director of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Lebensreform.

99. Bartsch's and Dreidax's colleague Herman Polzer described the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Lebensreform thus: "Our Society is not a bourgeois association but a working group of active National Socialists. The bedrock on which we build is the National Socialist worldview. Everyone of us recognizes its laws of life as our foundation and our binding duty, not only politically but in our entire personal and daily life." (Leib und Leben, May 1941, 72) The organization comprised groups dedicated to alternative health, nutrition, farming, and other versions of 'lifestyle reform' as part of the Nazi project. Cf. Franz Dreidax, "Jahrestagung der Lebensreform in Innsbruck August 1938" Demeter, October 1938,178-79.

100. See e.g. Wilhelm Rauber, "Bauern 'kraft Gesetzes' oder wesenhaftes Bauerntum? Gedanken uber die Notwendigkeit eines lebensgesetzlichen Landbaus" Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, November 1940, 676-82; Erhard Bartsch, "Vom Wesen des Betriebsorganismus" Odal, April 1940, 287-90; Bartsch, "Der Erbhof Marienhohe: Ein Beispiel lebensgesetzlicher Landbauweise" Odal, September 1940, 695-701.

101. BA R58/6223/1: 320; BA RK/I18: 11914 and 2104; BA RK/I85: 1990. Darre also honored Bartsch's biodynamic estate with the official designation of "model farm."

102. Cf. Bartsch's 1939-1940 correspondence with Ilse Hess, wife of Rudolf Hess, BA R9349/2/H; Rudolf Hess to Alwin Seifert, November 14, 1938, BA R58/6223/1: 318; Reischle to Keitel, October 25, 1940, BA R58/6223/1: 328. Ilse Hess was a member of the Society for the Promotion of Biodynamic Agriculture.

103. December 1934 'Geschaftsbericht des Reichsverbandes fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise' in BA R58/6197/1: 192; Seifert to Lippert, October 13, 1937, BA R9349/3/S; Wilhelm zur Linden, Blick durchs Prisma (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1965), 247.

104. July 6, 1941 SD report on the Reichsverband fur biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise, BA R58/6223/1: 242.

105. For examples see the December 19, 1939 memorandum by Nicolaus Remer of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture, and Hermann Schneider to Heinrich Himmler, December 9, 1939, both in BA R9349/3; the May 9, 1940 report by Heinrich Vogel on biodynamics and SS 'settlements', BA NS3/1175; Bartsch to Hess, November 9, 1940, BA R58/6223/1: 310; and Fritz Hoffmann, "Lebensgesetzliche Grundlagen" Leib und Leben, November 1940, 109-10.

106. Pancke to Himmler, November 20, 1939, BA NS2/60: 51-59.

107. Himmler to Pohl, June 18, 1941, BA NS19/3122: 83; Brandt to Vogel, March 2, 1942, BA NS19/3122: 38.

108. Pancke to Pohl, February 29, 1940, BA PK/A199: 2778; Pancke to Heydrich, January 8, 1940, BA PK/A199: 2780; and Pancke's further correspondence in support of biodynamics as head of the SS Office of Race and Settlement in the same file.

109. Pohl to Himmler, June 17, 1940, BA NS19/3122: 80.

110. Bernhard Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbruck: Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes (Paderborn: Schoningh, 2003), 212-13. Extensive information on SS biodynamic plantations is available in Enno Georg, Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der SS (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1963), 62-66; Hermann Kaienburg, Die Wirtschaft der SS (Berlin: Metropol, 2003),771-855; and Wolfgang Jacobeit and Christoph Kopke, Die Biologisch-dynamische Wirtschaftsweise im KZ: Die Guter der 'Deutschen Versuchsanstalt fur Ernahrung und Verpflegung' der SS von 1939 bis 1945 (Berlin: Trafo, 1999).

111. BA R58/6197/1:162.

112. BA NS3/1430: 114; BA SM/L40: 623-630. For details on the Dachau biodynamic plantation cf. Robert Sigel, "Heilkrauterkulturen im KZ: Die Plantage in Dachau" Dachauer Hefte 4 (1988), 164-73; Walter Wuttke- Groneberg, "Die Heilkrauterplantage im KZ Dachau" in Gerhard Baader, ed., Medizin und Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Verlagsgesellschaft Gesundheit, 1980), 116-20; Daniella Seidl, "Zwischen Himmel und Holle": Das Kommando 'Plantage' des Konzentrationslagers Dachau (Munich: Utz, 2008). According to a December 1939 DVA report, the Dachau plantation was built by camp inmates, "mainly Jews and Gypsies" (BA NS3/1433: 133).

113. Franz Lippert, Das Wichtigste in Kurze uber Krauter und Gewurze (Berlin: Nordland Verlag, 1943). Nordland Verlag was the SS publishing house. On Seifert's role at the Dachau plantation and his relationship with Lippert see Seidl, "Zwischen Himmel und Holle", 156-57.

114. Although estranged from his father, longtime anthroposophist and Nazi party member Hanns Rascher, Sigmund Rascher maintained very friendly relations with leading figures in the biodynamic movement, including Otto Lerchenfeld, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, and Franz Lippert. He published an article on biodynamics in 1936 and recommended biodynamic literature to Himmler. Substantial material on Rascher can be found in BA NS21/921a, BA NS21/915, BA NS21/916, and BA NS21/925.

115. See the memo on "Siedler fur den Osten" in BA NS3/1175: 57, and Seifert to Bodenstedt, April 2, 1941, BAK N1094/II/1.

116. March 1941 DVA report, BA R58/6223/1: 365.

117. Vogel to Brandt, Personlicher Stab Reichsfuhrer-SS, October 29, 1943, BA NS19/3122: 27-28. Grund was one of the foremost spokesmen for biodynamic agriculture in Nazi Germany. He joined the NSDAP in May 1933 and the SA in November 1933. In August 1942 he was named an SS- hopelessly compromised by its worst features is a foolish form of defeatism. A more reasonable radical position would be to affirm the emancipatory strivings which underlie the modern project precisely by combating the distorted forms modernity has taken: capitalism, the nation-state, reified science and technology, and so forth. What much of contemporary 'radical environmentalism' does, rather, is to condemn modernity as a whole and thus bury its latent liberatory potential while leaving its present concrete manifestations unchallenged. The dream of reactionary ecology is to escape history; an informed and aware radical ecology seeks to re-shape history.

126 .Landry, "How Brown were the Conservationists," 91.

127. Similar objections have been raised in Germany by scholars as well as activists. For penetrating analyses see Joachim Wolschke- Bulmahn, "Zu Verdrangungs- und Verschleierungstendenzen in der Geschichtsschreibung des Naturschutzes in Deutschland" in Uwe Schneider and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, eds., Gegen den Strom: Gert Groning zum 60. Geburtstag (Universitat Hannover, 2004), 313- 35; Wolschke-Bulmahn, "Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus - Darstellungen im Spannungsfeld von Verdrangung, Verharmlosung und Interpretation" in Gert Groning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, eds., Naturschutz und Demokratie!? (Munich: Meidenbauer, 2006), 91-114; Peter Bierl and Clemens Heni, "Eine deutsche Liebe: Ober die braunen Wurzeln der Grunen und die Lucken der Naturschutzforschung" Konkret, January 2008, 24-26. In English see the pioneering argument by Douglas Weiner, "Demythologizing Environmentalism" Journal of the History of Biology 25 (1992), 385-411. Weiner takes right-wing ecology seriously as a historical phenomenon and a political challenge, and emphasizes the political nature of all environmental visions.

128. Aside from the anti-humanism that remains a prominent feature of current environmental thought, questions along these lines need to be raised even when they are bound to step on some toes. To choose merely one example: What role does the notion of natural 'purity' play in contemporary practices like organic farming or veganism or wilderness protection? Does the fact that fascists sometimes embraced related practices call for reflection on their political resonance? Neither simple condemnation nor simple dismissal does justice to such complex dilemmas. For a critical appraisal of the aporias of "romantic ecology" see Chaia Heller, "Rescuing Lady Nature: Ecology and the Cult of the Romantic" in Heller, Ecology of Everyday Life (Montreal: Black Rose, (999), 13-38.

129. On this point see the fine recent study by Noel Sturgeon, Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural (University of Arizona Press, 2009), 8-14, classifying biocentric approaches as part of mainstream environmentalism rather than radical ecological politics. Sturgeon writes: "conceiving of nature and culture as radically separate spheres, presenting humans as a universalized cause of damage to a pristine nonhuman environment, and promoting individualistic solutions to environmental problems without considering the need for structural, economic, or social change does not get at the root of our problems." (8)

130. For an example of these overstated apprehensions in a German context see the comparison between the Nazis and the Greens in Gotz Warnke, Die grune Ideologie: Heile-Welt-Mythen, Gesellschaftsutopien und Naturromantik als Ausdruck einer angstbestimmten Politik (Frankfurt: Lang, (998), 446-47.
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