German Nature Writing: Notes on the German Tradition of the Popular Nature Book and on the Phenomenon of ‘Peter Wohlleben’

This contribution contests the assertion that in German literature there is no equivalent of what is commonly called nature writing in Anglophone cultures. It points out that a corresponding German tradition does indeed exist, namely the non-fictional nature book which, as a genre, emerged around 1900. Writers such as Wilhelm Bölsche and Raoul H. Francé published popular nature books, written in literary rather than purely fact-oriented prose, which popularised scientific insights while combining these with an aesthetic appreciation of nature, thereby bridging the—at the time—emerging gap between the ‘two cultures’. Finally, Peter Wohlleben’s best-selling book The Hidden Life of Trees is examined in the context of this genre—a book which, to some extent due to the very specific traditions of German literary studies, would not have been considered a worthy object of investigation in literary studies.