In November 1981 the German weekly Der Spiegel published a provocative photomontage on its cover: at the bottom was a photo of an obviously sick-looking stretch of forest; hovering above it were tall, dark chimneys puffing out their poisonous brew in high volumes—an image reminiscent of Gustave Doré’s famous visions of nineteenth-century British industrialization. Even more ominous than the montage itself was the accompanying title chosen by the magazine: “Acid Rain over Germany: The Forest is Dying.”

This cover story was the first of a three-part series in which Der Spiegel warned its readers in no uncertain terms of the imminent threat of Waldsterben in Germany (and beyond), as well as of a general environmental catastrophe that this would bring in its wake. Most scholars have generally regarded the spectacular Spiegel series to be the beginning of the nationwide debate about Waldsterben that gripped German society in the 1980s. This is a misconception, however, as Birgit Metzger's detailed study about the debate convincingly demonstrates. The origins of the discussion about Waldsterben were not to be found either in the Spiegel series or in the magazine's supposedly sudden discovery of some creeping environmental catastrophe that had previously gone unnoticed. But its journalists did sense that the time was ripe for this topic to become a leading political issue in the Federal Republic of Germany. Their instincts were correct: through the mid-1980s, this debate would indeed become one of the most dominant topics in German society and the media.

The reason why Metzger is able to show the real roots of the debate about Waldsterben is because of the approach she takes to her topic. Her main goal is to identify and analyze the origins, course, and results of this environmental debate, which is why she divides this well-written study, based on a rich variety of primary sources, into three separate parts covering each of these areas. The first part successfully reveals the preconditions and beginnings of the debate—going all the way back to the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949. The most insightful chapter here is the one on the actual discovery of Waldsterben in the crucible between science, politics, and the public sphere during the years 1979 to 1981, which nicely explains how the topic slowly but surely gained more and more relevance for all the main protagonists in the pending debate.

The second part is dedicated to the debate itself, focusing on the dominant role that experts played in that discussion, as well as on the question of how these scientific experts were perceived by German society as a whole at the time. In short, they enjoyed a high level of trust on the part of politicians—of all parties, it is worth emphasizing—and the general public. This was not based on completely blind trust, however: unlike many other environmental debates (most notably the ongoing one today about climate change)—which have dealt with challenges posed, for example, by the invisible nature of the supposed developments that were taking place, as well as by the uncertainty of future scenarios—the one about Waldsterben had the advantage of focusing on a phenomenon that was at least somewhat visible. As Metzger notes, German citizens of practically all ages were able to go on forest excursions led by experts (and often organized by environmental organizations or forestry commission offices) to see for themselves the dramatic damage taking place in their beloved forests. As a result of such educational initiatives, as well as of media coverage that consistently discussed the topic at a high level (supplemented by powerful imagery), there was a broad consensus in German society that Waldsterben was real and that immediate political action was necessary to stop it.

The political action eventually pursued is the focus of the third and last part of the book, which shows that, despite broad consensus about this looming environmental catastrophe, controversies could and did erupt when it came to the question of how best to counter Waldsterben. Given a widely held belief at the time in the so-called air pollution hypothesis, which claimed a causal connection between air pollution and Waldsterben, the suggested remedies were bound to lead to conflicts with certain industries and their lobbyists—in particular the coal and automotive industry. Tensions between economic and ecological interests were thus as palpable in this debate as they are in today's debate about climate change, and Metzger does a fine job showing the limits of political action because of such conflicts—for example, in her vivid discussion of an attempt to introduce a speed limit on the German Autobahn.

Metzger's study is also an important contribution to the history of the Federal Republic more broadly in the 1970s and 1980s. She demonstrates how essential the New Left, the peace movement, and the anti-nuclear movement had been in preparing the ground for the Waldsterben debate to take place, largely by raising awareness about the dangers of unsustainable economic development and by introducing new political mechanisms into the political repertoire of even mainstream German voters. Another worthwhile aspect of this study is its examination of the role that the ongoing search for a new and more positive German identity might have played in the 1980s with regard to the German public's general (and increasing) willingness to be open for “green” themes—while claiming them as something particularly German. The long tradition of German love for and fascination with the forest—which dated back to Romantic notions of the early nineteenth century, and which looked to the forest as a primarily cultural German symbol—even allowed for a sort of resurgence of the idea of a special German Kulturnation (minus the negative aspects, of course). This had the bonus of appealing to Germans from both the political left and right.

Birgit Metzger's study is, finally, a superb example of the benefits accruing to the use of interdisciplinary approaches: it fruitfully combines a historical approach with insights from sociology, cultural and linguistic studies, as well as political science. This allows the author to provide readers with a highly valuable lesson about how advanced societies tend to understand and deal with modern environmental problems. Given the state of the current debate about climate change, the obvious contemporary relevance of this topic hardly needs to be emphasized. But that very point leads to an important criticism of Metzger's fine study, namely, its complete lack of any international comparative analysis. This is even more regrettable given the fact that the study was developed as part of a larger research project that addressed, among other things, the issue of Waldsterben in the German Democratic Republic and France. One can hope for a truly comparative analysis in the future, one that will help us better understand the remarkable differences in the way such debates have taken place in Germany—as opposed, say, to the United States—since the 1980s.