Driving Germany

The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970
1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-1-84545-309-1
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 5, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 585 g

Reihe: Studies in German History

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Hitler's autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zeller, Thomas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction: Germany and its Autobahn

A growing overlap: history of technology and environmental history

Transportation history: the system of mobility

Chapter 2. Landscape: the Dual Construction

Physically altered landscapes

Culturally altered landscapes

Chapter 3. The Historical Habitat of Landscape-Friendly Roads

The autobahnen in environmental history

Building technological landscapes on the Rhine and Neckar

Reconciling nature and technology in the interwar period

Alwin Seifert and Fritz Todt: a biographic constellation

Chapter 4. Planning the Autobahn before and after 1933

The failed autobahn project of the interwar period

Building the Nazi autobahn

The place of the autobahn in the Nazi dictatorship

Propagandizing the Reichsautobahn

German Technology (Deutsche Technik) and the Reichsautobahn

Chapter 5. Conflicts over the Harmonious Road

Finding a niche for landscape architects

Searching for a job description

Pitting landscape architects against civil engineers

Marginalizing conservation and spatial planning on the autobahn

Legalizing the exclusion of conservation

Chapter 6. The Myth of the Green Autobahn

Road alignment as a subject of controversy

“One drives faster than I can write”: visual consumption on the Reichsautobahnen

The flora of the Nazi autobahn: contesting native plants

An ideology disintegrates: technology in the crisis of 1937

The value and cost of landscaping

The landscape advocates seek power beyond the autobahn

Chapter 7. Reinterpretations: the West German Autobahn, 1949 to 1970

Autobahnen and the politics of the Bonn Republic

Building a federal highway system

The postwar trust in numbers

“An autobahn is not a hiking path”: roadside plantings as safety devices

Roadside greenery as a bone of public contention

Chapter 8. Conclusion

Bibliography and Sources

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Zeller, Thomas
Thomas Zeller is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches the history of technology, environmental history, and science and technology studies. He is the author of Strasse, Bahn, Panorama (2002) and has co-edited the volumes How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (2005), Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (2005), The World Beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe (2008) and Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America (2008). His current research project,  consuming Landscapes, has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and the Program in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.

Thomas Zeller is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches the history of technology, environmental history, and science and technology studies. He is the author of Strasse, Bahn, Panorama (2002) and has co-edited the volumes How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (2005), Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (2005), The World Beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe (2008) and Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America (2008). His current research project,  consuming Landscapes, has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and the Program in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.