ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES 173
The gap in lifestyles between city and country has shrunk dramati-
cally, but tensions can still be detected from an environmental history
perspective. No other area of German society reacted as vigorously to
new environmental policies than the agricultural sector. While the en-
vironmental report issued by the GDR in 1990 called for a “reduction of
livestock numbers in over-sized facilities to an ecologically acceptable
level and decentralized animal husbandry,” for example, the actual trend
toward ever-larger mass breeding farms continued unabatedly.^109 Con-
certed reform eff orts such as the “agrarian reform” (Agrarwende), which
the red-green coalition launched at the height of the BSE (bovine spongi-
form encephalopathy) crisis, were not able to reverse these developments,
though they did achieve some improvements.^110
In sum, environmental history brings us to reconsider received wis-
doms of the literature. Maybe the countryside did not disappear as com-
prehensively as conventional readings suggest? And maybe the ultimate
triumph of freedom was a relative thing when we look at the fate of ani-
mals in factory farms? Environmental history does not just claim a room
of its own in the house of history—it also forces us to review the narra-
tives and the perspectives that historians have embraced. Scholars have
only begun to explore this subversive power of environmental history.
Reunited Ecologies
From an environmental history perspective, reunifi cation took place on
diff erent levels at varying speeds and with varying amounts of hubbub.
On a material level, reunifi cation marked the beginning of a clean-up
program in the GDR that would costs billions, but it occurred largely
beyond the public’s attention. Few people cared about the GDR’s shoddy
waste management practices, but many were angry about the new sew-
age treatment plants. They brought fees for house owners to unprec-
edented heights, and it did not help that many plants were oversized
in anticipation of an economic boom that never materialized.^111 Political
reunifi cation proved to be more diffi cult, particularly when it required
more than a bloc transfer of the West German state of the art to the new
East German states.
The green 1980s were a time of mutually reinforcing actions in poli-
tics, civil society, and lifestyles. The 1990s were diff erent: tensions grew
between the diff erent realms. A gap emerged between political impera-
tives and civic protest, as shown in events such as the protests against
the sinking of the oil platform Brent Spar in 1995. While the Greenpeace-
inspired protests drew widespread support and ultimately triggered the