Detention and mystical to say: So the forest was in the middle ages. Lyrical and picturesque, he was in the romance. Today it is a resort, and in danger, as the current events of the hambach forest.
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The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest sports: Training in the fresh air
Why in stuffy gyms, pushing, standing in line for exercise equipment and a screen, staring, while the pedals without stirring from the place? An Alternative to this, the forest offers. So, pack your backpack, Hiking shoes and go on in nature.
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The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest kindergarten: Growing up in the outdoors
How cunning is a Fox? How old is a stag beetle? What ants do in the Winter? Can taste a tree slice salad? The answers know the young researchers in the natural and forest kindergartens. A total of 1,500 such facilities already exist in Germany – and they are growing in popularity.
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The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest burial: resting in the forest
The last resting place found in nature? This is possible – and in German-speaking countries as an Alternative to the traditional cemetery is becoming more and more popular. The ashes of the deceased is placed in a biodegradable urn and the earth. In General, a small name plate on the tomb carefully.
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The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest master: The smell of Spring.
He should beat witches in the flight, and with magical powers which awaken the love in others: There are many legends surrounding the mysterious Plant. Fixed: With his Aroma, he refined the Maibowle and in small doses, he even helps against a headache.
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The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest hotel: Sleep under the open sky
Birds chirping, leaves rustling, the sun to feel the rays: the tree hotels are an unusual place to stay. For frost, the best selection of dents, perhaps, but for all the adventure a room without a roof and walls is enthusiastic certainly an experience value.
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The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest sports: Training in the fresh air
Why in stuffy gyms, pushing, standing in line for exercise equipment and a screen, staring, while the pedals without stirring from the place? An Alternative to this, the forest offers. So, pack your backpack, Hiking shoes and go on in nature.
-
The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest kindergarten: Growing up in the outdoors
How cunning is a Fox? How old is a stag beetle? What ants do in the Winter? Can taste a tree slice salad? The answers know the young researchers in the natural and forest kindergartens. A total of 1,500 such facilities already exist in Germany – and they are growing in popularity.
-
The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest burial: resting in the forest
The last resting place found in nature? This is possible – and in German-speaking countries as an Alternative to the traditional cemetery is becoming more and more popular. The ashes of the deceased is placed in a biodegradable urn and the earth. In General, a small name plate on the tomb carefully.
-
The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest master: The smell of Spring.
He should beat witches in the flight, and with magical powers which awaken the love in others: There are many legends surrounding the mysterious Plant. Fixed: With his Aroma, he refined the Maibowle and in small doses, he even helps against a headache.
-
The forest-free period: Where the Germans let your soul dangle
The forest hotel: Sleep under the open sky
Birds chirping, leaves rustling, the sun to feel the rays: the tree hotels are an unusual place to stay. For frost, the best selection of dents, perhaps, but for all the adventure a room without a roof and walls is enthusiastic certainly an experience value.
To write a Text about the forest, at the Desk, is not a rewarding task. The did Hermann Hesse quite different. He found the right words to pay homage to the forest: “Strange, beautiful hills, runaways, dark mountains, bright mats, red rocks, brown canyons, Überflort of pine shadows!”, the writer Hesse (1877 – 1962) wrote, inspired by his numerous Visits to his sister in Unterreichenbach, in the North of the black forest.
For the writer Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, the forest – about 100 years before was an epitome of national unity and freedom. “O valleys wide, o heights, / O beautiful green forest,” wrote the poet in his poem “farewell”. It is a tribute to the forest that is represented as a place of rebirth and enlightenment, gives the people happiness, satisfaction, and protection from social pressure and the chaotic everyday life.
Scary and feared
The Germans have always had a very special relationship to the forest – one that has been discovered over the centuries, again and again.
An event that took place in the forest, and later this place, the myth, the battle of the Teutoburg forest in the year 9 after Christ. “Although we do not know whether the Teutoburg forest was the site of the battle, but it plays a big role, that it took place in the forest,” says Detlev Arens, author of the book “The German forest”. It was due to a Roman Poet, namely, Tacitus, what is interpreted in the woods. “Tacitus describes the Germans as a terrible jungle full of ugly swamps. And then he concludes: Like the country, man. This perception and Interpretation of the barren lands of the Roman author, Tacitus, more had up to the middle ages: ghosts and witches ruled in the middle ages the forest. Before the robbers, who were waiting behind trees, hiding for their prey, had to be afraid of anyway. The image of the dark forest has long held in popular belief. In addition, the forest air was considered harmful, unhealthy and humid. The forest was the home of demons and mythical creatures, the man should keep away.
Heritage site, and piece of German identity
“The Chasseur in the forest” by Caspar David Friedrich
The romance gave the forest a new, positive Image and made it the Central and defining theme in poetry, painting and music. In the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm, the forest was no longer indispensable as a setting: The small, innocent little red riding hood meets in the forest on the evil Wolf. The frightened Hansel and Gretel meet in the forest the evil witch. Or the town musicians, the need to only run once through the forest, until you reach the city of Bremen.
In German romanticism it is stylized to the identity Symbol, especially to the unloved neighboring country of France to delineate. The Elevation of the German forest, had political as well as literary roots, so Arens: “The German forest is created as a contrast to the French Park. Are the Germans, according to Tacitus, these robust natives that live in the forest and with the forest, while the French have long since lost this relationship, and as a decadent people in the literature at the time,” says Detlev Arens.
Later the national socialists took advantage of the romantic idea of the forest for their own purposes – and instrumentalized it as a political Symbol: of people planted in the “German oak” ordered in honor of Hitler’s and foresters the trees so that they formed a swastika. Germany survived the war, remained in the forest as a place of desire and identification. Until today, the forest is the epitome of pure nature and authenticity. A place of rest – in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle and artificial life, which is attributed mainly to large cities.
The forest is in danger
With 11.4 million acres, almost one third of the total area of Germany is covered with forest. In the last ten years the forest area has increased in this country to 50,000 hectares, 0.4 percent (source: German forest protection Association). However, the climate change and energy policies pose a threat to the forest. A current example: the hambach forest. He has become in the past few months, the Symbol for the fight against the coal-fired power generation. For six years, part of the forest is occupied territory of environmentalists, who live in self-built tree houses. Now, the German energy company RWE, owns the Land wants clearing, the few acres of forest at the edge of the huge coal mine, from the middle of October. Trying to prevent environmentalists currently.
Not only is the energy policy of the forest, he is also the suffering of climate change is carrying. Global warming and the decreasing of moisture also in the trees is noticeable, especially the spruce, which accounts for 25 per cent of the German forest, gets the climate change is clearly felt.
The attempt of a Definition
The forest is more than the sum of its trees – for the German he is, and remains, identity, sense of home, culture, sustainability, resource. Everything, you might think almost. And the special thing about it is: “Although the forest plays in many other countries also have a large role, especially in folk music, but the German in the German woods is this parallel development between the romantic forest, especially in the literature on the one hand, and the sober scientific view on the other side, which opens an economic perspective,” concludes Arens. And not to be under the influence of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus was appreciate to this day. Even if the evidence is flimsy: The famous font “Germania,” characterises to this day the image of the Germans, the myth of the Germanic tribes, whose way of life is characterized by the forest is based.
