Cold War Ecology: Forests, Farms, and People in the East German Landscape, 1945-1989
Arvid Nelson
Abstract
East Germany, its economy, and its society were in decline long before the country's political collapse in the late 1980s. This book argues that the clues were there in the natural landscape, but policy analysts were blind to them. Had they noted the record of the leadership's values and goals manifest in the landscape, they would not have hailed East Germany as a Marxist-Leninist success story. The book sets East German history within the context of the landscape history of two centuries to underscore how forest and ecosystem change offered a reliable barometer to the health and stability of ... More
East Germany, its economy, and its society were in decline long before the country's political collapse in the late 1980s. This book argues that the clues were there in the natural landscape, but policy analysts were blind to them. Had they noted the record of the leadership's values and goals manifest in the landscape, they would not have hailed East Germany as a Marxist-Leninist success story. The book sets East German history within the context of the landscape history of two centuries to underscore how forest and ecosystem change offered a reliable barometer to the health and stability of the political system that governed them. It explains how East German leaders' indifference to human rights and their disregard for the landscape affected the rural economy, forests, and population. This lesson from history suggests new ways of thinking about the health of ecosystems and landscapes, and proposes assessing the stability of modern political systems based on the environment's system qualities rather than on political leaders' goals and beliefs.
Keywords:
forests,
East Germany,
human rights,
rural economy,
population,
ecosystems,
natural landscape,
political systems
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300106602 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300106602.001.0001 |
