“Idyllischer Gartenzwergkapitalismus”: A Distinct Ordoliberal Environmental Framework?

This article offers a systematic and critical analysis of ordoliberal engagements with nature. Drawing on published and unpublished writings, private correspondence, and public addresses of key ordoliberal thinkers, primarily Alexander Rüstow and Wilhelm Röpke, it argues that their environmental thought was neither a precocious ecological awareness nor a coherent policy program, but rather a deeply romantic and conservative cultural critique of modern industrial society. Situating ordoliberalism within the broader intellectual milieu of Lebensphilosophie and the Conservative Revolution, the article traces how environmental ideas were embedded within their civilizational critique of modernity, functioning as a normative benchmark for social and cultural order. It further demonstrates how their conception of nature served to naturalize social hierarchy and legitimize a parochial vision of small-scale, locally embedded communities that proved increasingly difficult to reconcile with the economic realities they simultaneously promoted.