Scott Moranda's book addresses the relationship between state and society in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) by investigating the intertwined histories of tourism and landscape planning. Punning on the term “people's enterprise,” or Volkseigener Betrieb (VEB), Moranda's title, The People's Own Landscape, contains one of his central claims: recreational landscapes did not serve as a refuge from the SED regime, as a space apart from repression and the machinations of power, but were constituted instead through a “mainstream consensus” (3) of which vacationers themselves were a part. Average East Germans expected the state to provide recreational opportunities and tourist infrastructure, and GDR authorities delivered these amenities with the help of landscape planners. In six topical chapters, Moranda traces the fate of this consensus from the GDR's founding to its dissolution, contending that it came under pressure in the 1970s and fell apart in the 1980s.

According to Moranda, three main groups sustained the “mainstream consensus”: the “conservation bloc,” meaning people who had a professional or private stake in landscape care; East Germans interested in outdoor recreation; and representatives of the party state. As the party tried to conquer the countryside, make its beauty accessible to industrial workers, and turn ostensibly “backward” peasants into modern proletarian laborers, bourgeois tourism traditions—or what were identified as such—were forced to yield. Erstwhile “unproductive” contemplation of nature had to be replaced by “productive” athletic tourism that restored the industrial worker's physical capacity, ultimately supporting industrial growth. Landscapes thus mattered politically and economically, not just for agricultural production but also as sites of leisure that, in turn, enhanced industrial production. Landscape planners and conservationists latched on to the significance of nature for leisure in order to maintain or regain relevance. Moranda argues that this move was not merely a tactical ploy, however. Rather, the “conservation bloc” shared two basic assumptions with the SED regime: first, that leisure had to be productive, advance economic growth, and ensure material abundance; and second, that landscapes could be optimized to accommodate still more leisure activities. This willingness to work together with the SED, Moranda asserts, was grafted upon a long tradition of interventionist statism in the sphere of German nature conservation.

As Moranda identifies various demands for and pledges to offer touristic opportunities, he curiously bypasses any discussion of the GDR's borders. While mentioning the “GDR's geographical limitations” (39, 89) in passing, the consequences of those limitations for tourism are left unaddressed. Given that East German vacationers had no choice but to patronize domestic destinations, since holiday travel to the West was not an option and travel to other Socialist countries remained an unpredictable privilege, ecologically valuable locations at home, such as lakeshores, beaches, and mountain ranges, predictably came under pressure. Moranda's own evidence frequently points toward this connection between border policy and the scarcity of tourist spaces. He is right to point out that “on vacation, East Germans never stopped encountering the state” (81)—not least, one should add, in the choice of where they could (and could not) travel.

The mainstream consensus about leisure in nature began to crack in the 1970s and eventually dissolved in the 1980s. Moranda's explanation involves all three parties to the consensus. The SED could not renege on its promises of material abundance and consumption, of which tourism was a part. East Germans had begun to consider outdoor leisure an everyday entitlement, and they complained in letters (Eingaben) and bickered with one another over inequality of access to the best spots. The resulting proliferation of dachas and campgrounds ultimately irritated conservationists, who realized that tourists constituted a threat to nature preservation. As Moranda insightfully points out, the conservationists' initial embrace of leisure in nature began to backfire: “Earlier, conservationists promoted Erholung as a means to protect landscapes, but now Erholung justified uses of the land that threatened protection efforts” (163). Rather than consider land-use reform, the SED regime preferred to give in to pressure from below and address complaints about unequal access to nature by developing more natural areas for tourism. In this context, Moranda could have fruitfully addressed the fact that SED fat cats had reserved some of the prime locations for themselves: by 1989, SED leaders had created twenty-two state hunting reserves (Staatsjagden) in the Müritz region and elsewhere, to which ordinary East Germans had no access. Along with exclusive vacation destinations like Vilm Island near Rügen, no less than 4 percent of the GDR's territory served no other purpose than providing “green privileges” for party leaders, as GDR environmentalist Michael Succow has pointed out. The irony, however, is that this obvious inequality ultimately helped preserve these landscapes, many of which became part of the new national parks in 1990. Yet, discussion of specific landscapes, such as the Müritz Lake District or the Baltic shore, is rare in Moranda's study. With the exception of “Saxon Switzerland” (Sächsische Schweiz) and the Greifenbach Reservoir near Chemnitz, Moranda does not discuss concrete landscapes; he uses the term instead in a generic way. His study thus feels geographically unmoored at times and does not venture into the ecological specificities of any particular landscape.

In the second half of the book, Moranda shows vividly how the mainstream consensus cracked along every side of the triangle formed by SED, conservationists, and tourists. Confronted with the consequences of “growthism” (17), conservationists and East German vacationers parted ways. Those East Germans who took the trouble to write Eingaben about pollution rightly emphasized the value of unspoiled landscapes but did not advocate protecting nature for its own sake. Rather, they came to think of nature as a rare commodity analogous to other elusive consumer goods and thus pushed for better distribution—which, in the case of commodified nature, translated into demands for more (and more equal) access to natural landscapes. Some conservationists, in contrast, turned to a principled criticism of industrial growth and demanded protection of nature and the environment as such. Activists like Annette Beleites even counseled against consumption and materialism. Not surprisingly, such a critique collided with popular perceptions of scarcity in the socialist economy.

The short conclusion reaffirms the idea that the transformation of the East German countryside during socialism cannot be explained by analyzing state actors alone but needs to take the actions of ordinary citizens into account. Moranda's book constitutes a welcome contribution to the still modest historiography of GDR tourism and nature conservation.