Thinking with wetlands

The working group is a collaboration between the Institute for European Cultural History (IEK) and the Centre for Environmental Research (WZU) at the University of Augsburg. This collaboration dates back to the 2022 European Cultural History Day, which focused on the cultural and intellectual history of water.

Wetlands – ecosystems that are permanently or seasonally flooded by water – are found all over the world in countless variations. Classified according to their water source, they range from tidal wetlands to river floodplains, from groundwater-fed fens and seepage areas to raised bogs saturated by rain or meltwater. Over the past centuries, those in power often equated wetlands with wasteland, as they viewed them as obstacles to urbanisation, agriculture and the exercise of state power. As a result of policies aimed at transforming these landscapes through reclamation and drainage, vast areas of wetlands have been lost to this day.

The “Thinking with Wetlands” working group explores these aquatic transitional zones from the early modern period to the present day, fascinated by the fact that they are neither land nor water. We meet regularly at the IEK to read texts together or discuss our own work.

The Chair of the History of Germany’s Interconnections with the East and the Bukovina Institute are involved in the working group with two sub-projects:

“Healing with peatlands. Western Bohemian Spas, Balneology and the body politic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

This sub-project examines peat baths in spa towns in western Bohemia and highlights the fundamental shift in public consciousness. Peatlands transformed from disease-ridden landscapes into places of healing.

“Bukovina and Its Natural Features: A Vertical Civilising Mission for Wetlands and Peoples.”

This individual project examines land improvement schemes in Habsburg Bukovina as a case study of internal colonisation and imperial state-building. It aims to analyse how state-initiated projects for drainage and soil improvement, known as land improvement schemes, formed part of a “civilising mission”.