Recreating Nature: German Romantic Landscapes as Cultural Ecology

Be it the depictions of castles and seductive sirens along the Rhine River in the poetry and prose of Brentano, Eichendorff, and Heine, the paintings of artists like Runge and Friedrich, or the fairy tales told by the Brothers Grimm, the German Romantics created landscapes whose images continue to resonate in the popular imagination.

Follow Dennis Mahoney, the Wolfgang and Barbara Mieder Green and Gold Professor of German at the University of Vermont, on a journey from the 1800s to today. He’ll start with the economic, scientific, and philosophical developments in German territories around 1800 that helped lead to a new conception and depiction of nature in art and literature. Then, drawing on the notion of art and literature as a cultural ecology that criticizes current practices and presents images of what society lacks or desires, he’ll conclude by sketching out some of the German Romantic roots of today’s environmental movement.