Tracing Wooden Form: The German Forest and Timber Between Cultural and National Identity

This thesis examines the socio-spatial concept of ‘wooden form’ as a distinctive human-environment relationship in the premodern cultural history of the German territories, analysing its ‘enclosure’, ideological transfiguration, and theoretical potential. Within this investigation, the significance of forests and timber in the intertwined histories of cultural and national identity in Germany is unfolded. The latter is connected to the histories of technology, economics, and ecology. In particular, it focuses on the formation of the concept of the German nation-state as a role model for environmentalism. As an ideological critique, this analysis challenges specific nationalist narratives: Firstly, the idea of a German environment that has ‘organically grown’, in which the German forest symbolises the landscape and essence of nature that characterises the German territory. Secondly, closely linked to the first, is the notion that the ‘native’ German house is constructed from timber. Thirdly, the contemporary belief that timber is a sustainable or ecological building material simply because it is organic. As part of dismantling social constructions, the thesis aims to examine the relationship between nationalism and environmentalism that persists in the contemporary context. However, above all, the analyses of the spatial configurations that emerged from the pre-modern era’s cultural and energetic reliance on wood lie at the centre of this research. The term ‘wooden form’ denotes a spatial configuration and cultural paradigm regarded as the precursor to the energetic paradigm of carbon form. From an academic perspective, it is crucial to clarify the historical circumstances under which the socio-spatial concept came to an end. Therefore, the thesis analyses the period of transition and the shift in meaning from cultural and existential reliance on forest and timber resources to the dissemination of idealised images between 1700 and 1871, coinciding with the advent of the nation-state. It aims to identify the historical shift in the significance and utilisation of wood, from a resource and cultural foundation of life to images of idealisation and the establishment of national identity. In response to the socio-cultural changes of that time, characterised by industrialisation and urbanisation, various life reform movements flourished, promoting anti-urban and völkisch retrotopias. Within these movements, forests and wood were revived, becoming the protagonists of nature conservation and ‘Heimatschutz’ (homeland protection) within an agrarian romanticism. Within these ideological frameworks, ‘wooden form’ as the German forest and the half-timbered framework house (as well as the Gothic style) were depicted as fundamental elements of national identity, symbolising the German Empire. Eventually, these belief systems laid the foundation for the ‘blood and soil’ ideology and the rise of the Nazi regime. In summary, this thesis examines the concept of ‘wooden form’, its cultural significance and ideological appropriations, as well as its socio-ecological potential.