The Art Newspaper

Among Trees: the Germans and the Forest

2 Dec 11 – 4 Mar 12

berlin. Germany’s adoration of nature is deeply embedded in its culture.

Reaching its climax in the Romantic period, the glorification of the forest has a rich tradition in the country’s literature, art and music.

Today, this is echoed in a political culture with a tendency towards progressive environmental policy and sustainable energy.

Bernd Ulrich, the curator of this exhibition on the relationship between Germans and their trees at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, says the notion began in earnest in 18th-century literature.

“When the forest was reinvented as a specifically German space, gradually becoming a symbol of freedom and unity after the German wars of liberation”.

Painters found inspiration in the nation’s woods, and much of the exhibition is devoted to works by a wide range of artists from romantic heavyweights such as Casper David Friedrich to contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer. The Nazis were equally enamoured with the forest. Ulrich says: “Throughout the 19th century, the strong connection between the forest and German nationhood moved increasingly in a National Socialist direction and the Nazis quickly adopted this sentiment for their propaganda.” Der Ewige Wald (The Eternal Forest), a Nazi propaganda film, will be shown in the exhibition alongside Third Reich-era tourism posters championing the joys of hiking.

The Nazis left their mark on trees in other ways and some of these are in the exhibition: bullet-riddled tree trunks and plaster-wax impressions of trees showing scratchings by prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Many of the recent works in the exhibition document the Waldsterben (the death of trees) Movement.

In the 1980s, fears that German forests were dying from pollution triggered a small environmental revolution that led to the introduction of catalytic converters into cars. While the causes of the sickly trees remain unclear, Ulrich believes the vigour of the debate “mirrored the special relationship of the Germans with their forests”. n Julia Michalska Categories: Thematic

• Monanism, Australia
• British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, United Kingdom
• 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Germany
• Owen Jones: Islamic Design, Discovery and Vision, United Arab Emirates
• This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1980s, USA

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• Berlin (45 current events)
• Washington (26 current events)

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