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Social Ecology pp 391–415Cite as

Long-Term Risks of Colonization: The Bavarian ‘Donaumoos’

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Part of the book series: Human-Environment Interactions ((HUEN,volume 5))

Abstract

This chapter presents a study in Environmental History that uses one of the key concepts of Social Ecology, ‘colonization of natural systems ’, to reconstruct the dramatic transformation of a peculiar landscape. This landscape is the ‘Donaumoos ’, a wetland along the left bank of the Upper Danube that was drained systematically from the 1770s onward. This colonization started during the first phase of the transition from an agrarian to an industrialized sociometabolic regime . Rich historical sources allow us to reconstruct the political, economic and cultural circumstances of such a large-scale intervention in a landscape, and they reveal that the environmental and social consequences of this project were heavily contested already among contemporaries. With a long-term perspective covering more than 250 years, this environmental history of the ‘Donaumoos’ exemplifies how societies are trapped in a ‘risk spiral’, where solving older problems of sustainability always results in new risks. Experts in the 18th century discussed major interventions into ‘natural’ systems with great passion. By revisiting a discourse of experts in the age of enlightenment, this chapter also contributes to a historical reflection on the term and the idea of ‘colonization of nature’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Compare this with the differentiation between ‘arrangements’ and ‘practices’ in the concept of ‘socio-natural sites’ (SNSs).

  2. 2.

    ‘Kultur […] heißt […] die Oberfläche des Bodens in Rücksicht seiner künftigen Erträgnis verbessern’ (Aretin 1795, p. 145).

  3. 3.

    Fibers from the hemp plant were used to produce, e.g., sailcloth and rope. Hemp retting was the process by which the hemp was rotted in order to separate the fibers from the woody inner core. To do this, the hemp plants were laid down for several days or weeks in stagnant water (also causing water pollution).

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Blackbourn (2006, pp. 86–91) on the regulation of the Oberrhein by Tulla.

  5. 5.

    Thus, the Catholic priest Johann Jakob Lanz worked on a project from 1778, which, although it was not realized in the form he envisaged, already saw some measures put into practice from 1790 and was regularly referred to by both proponents and opponents in the later arguments that took place. A description of Lanz’ project may be found in Hoser (2012, pp. 206–208).

  6. 6.

    The naturalist Schrank made a detailed study (1795, pp. 21, 29f.) of the influence of the Danube on the bog and, in this context, referred to Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli’s famous works on the Danube, written some two generations earlier (Marsigli 1726).

  7. 7.

    Hoser (2012, p. 212) records that the first houses were constructed in 1792.

  8. 8.

    The brickworks kiln using turf fuel was later abandoned, as the brick clay extraction sites were not productive enough and had become partially waterlogged (Pechmann 1832, p. 69).

  9. 9.

    For more details on the financial arrangements, see Hoser (2012, pp. 208f.).

  10. 10.

    It must have been the abovementioned Johann Georg Aretin himself who in 1794 put together a volume published anonymously two years later in which essays from influential opponents of the ‘Donaumoos-Kultur’ appear alongside texts by his father Karl Albrecht von Aretin and others in favor of the scheme (Aretin 1796). This compilation presented the arguments of the opponents, only to demolish them point by point. The volume as a whole is a cleverly conceived apology for cultivation, upon which I have drawn in the following account to reconstruct the arguments of the project’s opponents. For a summary, see also Hoser (2012, pp. 218f.).

  11. 11.

    ‘Peat and sandy soil, which the first wind draws up like dust and steals away together with what little loosened fruit is there.’ (Delagera 1794, p. 22; Schatte [n.d.], p. 59).

  12. 12.

    See the debate to which Radkau (1983) contributes on the alleged or real ‘wood famine’ in the 18th century, which the opponents also use in their arguments here.

  13. 13.

    On Schrank as a fundamental proponent of cultivation, see also Hoser (2012, pp. 217f.).

  14. 14.

    A brief note regarding sources: in this 1831 publication, the Donaumoos-Verein had to pull off a rhetorical balancing act. Fundamentally, they wished to attract charitable patrons who were ready to provide loans to the Association from which those donating could not expect to receive any financial profit (Donaumoos-Verein 1831, pp. 18f.). The situation of the bog must therefore not appear to be without hope, yet the conditions still had to be described in such a way that would awaken sympathy and a desire to help. Above all, it had to be convincingly shown that the colonists currently living in the bog were suffering in desperate conditions largely through no fault of their own. The central statements made by the Association are, however, confirmed by contemporary publications (particularly Pechmann 1832). That a critical view of the Donaumoos was not a unique opinion is also shown by the following judgment reached between 1827 and 1837 by the Bavarian encyclopaedist J.A. Schmeller: ‘The sums used for the cultivation of the [Donaumoos] appear to have been wasted, where new efforts do not use up what is available […] Nothing comes of nothing […] beggars remain […] even as colonists, generally beggars.’ (Schmeller 1872 [1827–1837], p. 1673).

  15. 15.

    ‘Fifteen to 20 years ago [i.e., until ca. 1815], it was not uncommon for the wind to carry away the light peat soil as it does the snow, yet such occurrences are certainly not observed in the present time.’ (Donaumoos-Verein 1831, p. 9).

  16. 16.

    This observation, although correct in itself, did not prevent the Association 40 years later from itself promising ‘one of the most beautiful and flourishing provinces in Bavaria within 15 years’ (Donaumoos-Verein 1831, p. 19).

  17. 17.

    Both Father Lanz and Aretin had already insisted upon this, believing that the mills were one of the major obstacles to the ‘culture’ (Aretin 1795, p. 52; on Lanz, see Hoser 2012, p. 207).

  18. 18.

    Pechmann begins his book with a chapter ‘On the Harmfulness of the Swamps and the Usefulness of Draining the same’.

  19. 19.

    For more details, see Hoser 2012, p. 220.

  20. 20.

    In Hoser’s account (2012, pp. 212f., 234), the primary responsibility for the decline of the Donaumoos after 1800 is attributed to Bresselau. Because he had placed all his faith in peat extraction, he had shown no interest in the maintenance of the drainage infrastructure and had allowed them to fall into disrepair.

  21. 21.

    The following abbreviated account of the history of the Donaumoos from the second half of the 19th century until the present day is based on Hoser (2012, pp. 221–232).

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Acknowledgements

This contribution is based on research I conducted while at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 2011. I wish to thank the team and the Fellows of the RCC for their professional support and inspiring discussions. My thanks go to Martin Knoll for his reference to J.A. Schmeller and his wise comments on an earlier version of this text. A longer German-language version of this text is planned for publication in 2015 in a volume that brings together contributions to the annual conference of the Institut für Donauschwäbische Geschichte und Landeskunde, organized by Márta Fata in Tübingen in November 2013, on the subject of ‘The colonization of bogs and wetlands: Land reclamation and migration between 1700 and 1850—a comparative study of the Habsburg Monarchy, Prussia and other German states’. Thanks to Ursula Lindenberg for translating this text from German into English.

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  1. Institute of Social Ecology (SEC), Alpen-Adria University, Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070, Vienna, Austria

    Martin Schmid

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies, Alpen Adria University Institute of Social Ecology Vienna (SEC), Vienna, Austria

    Helmut Haberl

  2. Institute of Social Ecology Alpen Adria University, Vienna, Austria

    Marina Fischer-Kowalski

  3. Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies, Alpen Adria University Institute of Social Ecology Vienna (SEC), Vienna, Austria

    Fridolin Krausmann

  4. Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies, Alpen Adria University Institute of Social Ecology Vienna (SEC), Vienna, Austria

    Verena Winiwarter

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Schmid, M. (2016). Long-Term Risks of Colonization: The Bavarian ‘Donaumoos’. In: Haberl, H., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., Winiwarter, V. (eds) Social Ecology. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33326-7_19

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