E
chapter 3
Entangled Ecologies
Outlines of a Green History
of Two or More Germanys
Frank Uekötter
F
ew would doubt that the signifi cance of environmental issues has
grown dramatically since 1970. We can fi nd the consequences in vir-
tually every sphere of life: in new ministries in East and West Germany;
new civic organizations such as BUND, Greenpeace, and Attac; new life-
styles; and new ways to talk about mobility, food, and other essentials
of modern life. Environmentalism has never been uncontested, and may
never be, but there is no way to doubt that it has seeped into the very
pores of German society, and environmental historians do not suff er from
a dearth of topics. But the broad range of issues and perspectives is a
challenge of the fi rst order for those who want to write coherent nar-
ratives: how do you take stock of something that knows no limits? The
green Germany is about politics and the economy, about social status
and material legacies; we fi nd its repercussions out in the countryside
and inside nuclear power plants; and environmentalism has left its mark
on ideas of German engineering as well as German patriotism. A widely
held opinion is that Germans take environmental issues more seriously
than the rest of the planet.
Environmental historians are not only wrestling with a broad range
of issues, but also face more than one line of confl ict. Diff erent groups
have been blamed for the state of the German environment—industrial-
ists, farmers, experts, consumers—and we get diff erent narratives with
each of these culprits. Was environmentalism anti-industrial at its core,
or is it a grandiose opportunity for German engineers in that it opens new
markets for cutting-edge technology made in Germany? And then there
