Imaginary Landscapes as a means to negotiate the social order of modern societies

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Etzemüller
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 400441127

The project focuses on the significance of landscape for social history in high modernity. The concept of imaginary landscapes refers to the interplay of the perception of landscape, its medial representation and its physical transformation. The subproject "Landscapes in Motion" illuminates this interrelationship in an inter-systemic comparison of U.S. and German history between the 1920s and 1950s. It explores a quite distinct dimension of this process, tying in with the history of mobility. At issue is the duality of motoring and hiking, of road and wilderness landscapes, for which the United States, with parkway construction and frontier obsession, and the German Reich, with its myths of the Reichsautobahn and "Wanderlust," have proven to be the sites of study par excellence. Motorists and hikers fought over the "right" forms of movement and the "right" nature of the landscapes required for them; the successful symbiosis of nature and technology contrasted with the temporary exit from industrial society into pre-modern, "naturally grown" spaces. They simultaneously fought over cultural chapter, gender roles, forms of subjectivation, and the state of the state, population, and culture as a whole. Yet both sides were responding to the same challenges of the Second Industrialization. They were concerned with the material design of timeless ideal landscapes that supposedly corresponded to the national essence. In addition to landscape architecture in general, the construction of (long-distance) hiking trails, Autobahnen/Parkways, and panoramic roads played a decisive role here. The subproject will shed comparative light on this connection between materiality and discourse.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants