Nature so rarely gives us humans the large space, immense power and diverse materials needed by the economy. So rarely do the power of nature and the matter of nature offer themselves directly to us where they are needed, and even rarer as they are needed. Humanity must change the natural. One can come to know always and everywhere the influence of economics on the landscape through hikes, yet on the other hand landscape and soil also influence economics. Often remnants of earlier economic forms are still existing. Yet the capitalist economy of today has changed the natural form of the landscape very distinctly. The "social hike" still observes too little of modern economic life, the economic structures and processes of the present. The hiking worker mainly avoids the modern work centers...
Even Nature itself has almost entirely an economic point that is rarely considered during hikes. Essential agriculture, with its nourishment, is based on products of nature, from the soil, from plants and animals....The wine grapes do not grow on the pretty mountains of the middle Rhine just to provide pretty little songs. The inhabitants there live wretchedly off the wineries, and the work of the vintner is often dangerous if the grapes grow on boulders that are difficult to reach. The natural forest disappears even more, leaving us today with only unnatural forest in which the trees are planted evenly. Each tree brings so much timber and has its value, Wood is important for the economy, it's needed for the construction of houses, transportation, equipment and furniture. Deciduous trees are replaced with coniferous trees, which are the preferred raw material. Coniferous timber is processed into celluose, out of which paper and artificial silk are produced; these two materials have great importance today. The large nurseries and tree-farms, the orchards and even the fruit trees along country roads also have economic significance.
Very diverse economic structures and facilities stand in the landscape. Their location is dependent on soil, metal resources and natural craft sources, in regards to both work and transportation. The oldest economic structures are the widely visible wind mills of the lowlands in which grains are still milled as they were in medieval times. Similairly, the water mills "on the roaring stream" in the mountain valleys also mill grain or cut wood. High smoke stacks and giant mud pits indicate where clay is processed into bricks at brickworks. Elsewhere deep sand pits or huge mounds of river gravel are found. Sand and gravel, like stone, are building materials. And quarries often destroy entire mountains in the Mittelgebirge, eating deep inside them....The sight of paper and textile factories in the pretty mountain valleys pleases the hiker little....In the vicinity of the Harz Mountains, the towers of the Kaliberg works break through the beauty of the hilly countryside. The gray and dirty facilities of the coal mines dominate the landscape in the industrial areas of Germany, in the Ruhr, in the Saar, in Upper Silesia. The giant facilities of many steel and iron works are also characteristic of the landscape in Westphalia and the Ruhr. Immense rubble heaps and powerful pits characterize the coal mines of middle and western Germany...
The market life in rural towns is often still as it was in the Middle Ages. The market wives still sit on the marketplace, selling their wares. The wood cutter, twig gatherer, mushroom collector and berry gatherer carry out the simplest economic tasks. Not all aspects of economic life which shape the landscape could be taken into consideration in this sketch, but all these and similiar institutions and activities of economic type are necessary both today and in the future. These productive institutions stand mostly in the correct place, in the economy and in the landscape. If they also have an ugly effect on the landscape, then the desire for their removal is romantic and will always have to remain romantic. This is because these institutions and activities are economically justified. The economy does not follow aesthetic laws, for it has its own laws. The proletarian hiker should recognize that clearly and use that knowledge to distinguish himself from other hikers. The development of the economy goes only forward, never backward. Only small limitations on it through law are possible, and they are welcome from our standpoint. But the belief that the socialist economic order eliminates the factory is false. It is even more necessary in Socialism than in Capitalism. We socialists strive for the management of the economy in the spirit of community. For the implementation of the socialist economy, existing businesses must be preserved. Our struggle revolves not around their continuance, but around their control.
Source: Der Naturfreund. Zeitschrift des Touristen-vereines "Die Naturfreunde" 35 (1931), 145-46.
Description and Commentary: As the official organ of the Friends of Nature, the mainstream Socialist working-class hiking association, Der Naturfreund periodicaly published articles reflecting on the nature of the movement, so to speak. Most ordinary members particpated in its activities because hiking, camping, skiing and other such activities appealed to them. In the context of the German political situation in the early 1930s, however, many working-class leaders felt it necessary to use such organizations to mobilize workers into an active struggle against Nazis, Communists and the middle class, who each villianized the Socialists and repeatedly attacked them by legal and extralegal means. By 1931, only the Socialists remained strongly committed to the democracy founded in 1918 at the collapse of the monarchy, whereas most other groups in German society, particularly conservative and nationalist members of the middle classes, felt that contemporary crises called for non-democratic solutions.
Thus, the irony of Mohr's position is quite striking. In adopting an ultra-orthodox Marxist position by asserting the primacy of economics over everything else, Mohr repudiates the very raison d'etre of the Friends of Nature, namely its focus on outdoors recreation. In attempting to politicize the activities of the Friends of Nature, he freely admits that modern economic activities seriously degrade the environment, but he also argues that activities of resource extraction and production take precedence over what he dismisses as mere "aesthetics." This assertion proves doubly ironic, for it presently forms the basis of many contemporary conservative arguments against environmental protection. Conservatives today maintain that environmental regulations and protections must not interfere with economic "growth," lest we all supposedly plunge ourselves into misery. But this article should also be seen in the context of the increasingly urgent political situation in Germany at the time. Mohr's earlier criticisms of recreational hiking were much more moderate; before 1930, he felt neither the chutzpah nor the need to exhort workers to hike through industrial areas instead of forests, but he does by this article in 1931. Mohr hoped that workers could use experiences and knowledge gained from hikes to better strategize in their struggles against other groups, particularly by observing and acting on the injustices of contemporary economic relationships.
Suggestions for further reading:
Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, Hill and Wang, 1992
Matthew Blowers, "Paths to the Summit": Conflicting Notions of Class, Nature and Modernity in the German Social Democratic Hiking Organization, 1930-32, University of Oregon Master's Thesis.
Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933, North Carolina, 1983
Section on "die Naturfreunde" in Hartmann Wunderer, Arbeitervereine und Arbeiterparteien: Kultur- und Massenorganisationen in der Arbeiterbewegung, 1890-1933, Campus Verlag, 1980
The Friends of Nature ("die Naturfreunde") produced a voluminous periodical literature. In addition to Der Naturfreund, the journal published out of Vienna for the organization as a whole, there were numerous regional journals published by the association's regional units. This cover comes from a late 1930 issue of Der Wanderer, from the Saxony Gau. As the cover art suggests, the activities of the members encompassed much more than hiking. Naturfreunde outings not only extended to other types of outdoor activities, such as boating, rock climbing and skiing, but frequently included natural history as well (particularly botany, geology and ornithology). Many Naturfreunde authors viewed "nature" in idealized terms as a more appropriate setting for human relationships; it offered what modern society lacked. As the factory image on this cover suggests, however, most Naturfreunde did not reject modernity outright. Rather, they held firm to certain nineteenth-century notions of progress, yet hoped to correct the excesses of modern progress by resituating human industrial and scientific endeavors within natural contexts (to varying degrees and for varying reasons, depending on what the individual author believed was "wrong" with modernity).
Suggested reading:
In spite of the obvious general appeal of outdoors activities to the membership of the Naturfreunde, there was little agreement within the organization over regarding the "meaning" of the movement. Many Naturfreunde entertained competing visions of how interactions with(in) "nature" could improve society, while some took the position that the hike itself rather than nature comprised the most relevant aspect of Naturfreunde activities (see Werner Mohr article above). One manifestation of these competing visions emerged in the political terrain, as many Naturfreunde either sympathized or formally aligned themselves with German Communist Party. Particularly after 1928, bitter tensions between the Socialists and Communists led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Communist workers from Socialist cultural organizations, including 79,000 expelled from the Naturfreunde. Ironically, these competing visions each incorporated various pleas for unity, as demonstrated by this Communist Naturfreunde periodical, Der proletaerische Wanderer ("The Proletarian Hiker"), from Chemnitz (April 1930 issue). "Gegen Spaltung" roughly translates to "we oppose splitting," a reference to the expulsions. Since each competing vision thus included universalist pretensions through their calls for unity, the bitter acrimony of discourse on the Left only escalated. Unlike many mainstream Naturfreunde, most Communist Naturfreunde were interested more explicitly in politics (although this did not preclude interest in outdoors activities). As such, the prominent industrial imagery on this cover may have been intended to evoke "proletarian" images and therefore resonate with a specific discourse of class struggle. Alternatively, the publisher may have intended it as an explicit repudiation of aesthetic emphases. [Incidently, "T.V." stands for Touristen-Verein, or "touring association." This is before television, folks!]
Caption forthcoming.
Caption forthcoming.