Overview

The modern idea of mastery over nature always had its critics, whether their motives were aesthetic, religious or environmentalist. By investigating how the most fundamental element - water - was conquered by draining fens and marshes, straightening the courses of rivers, building high dams and exploiting hydro-electric power, The Conquest of Nature explores how over the last 250 years, the German people have shaped their natural environment and how the landscapes they created took a powerful hold on the German imagination.

Historical Figures and Events

From Frederick the Great of Prussia to Johann Gottfried Tulla, the man who tamed the wild Rhine in the nineteenth century to Otto Intze, master dambuilder of the years around 1900, to the Nazis who set out to colonise living space in the East, this groundbreaking study shows that while mastery over nature delivers undoubted benefits, it has often come at a tremendous cost to both the natural environment and human life.