With this fine monograph, Sandra Chaney makes a valuable contribution to the growing historiography on nature's role in modern Germany. Chaney's aim is to explain how and why conservation became a significant influence in postwar West German democracy. By means of thorough research and subtle analysis, she shows that conservationism evolved parallel to West German culture in general, becoming increasingly flexible, pragmatic, and democratic.

Chaney begins with a synthesizing background chapter on pre-1945 Naturschutz that adequately prepares the way for her own arguments about the postwar era. She commences her analysis with the occupation years of 1945-1955. The conservationist movement survived its “uneven coordination” in the Third Reich relatively unscathed, and its leaders simply avoided discussing their support for the dictatorship. Chaney shows that in these early years, these leaders clung to the pre-1945 traditions of elitist disdain for “the masses” and organicist views of the relationship between nature and national identity. Because overt nationalism was now taboo, however, they advocated protecting “nature-as-Heimat” as a way to reconstruct a more positive identity of local and national citizenship in the new democracy. The movement became much more regionally focused once the country was re-federalized under the Basic Law, and conservation came under the purview of commissioners in the various states. Together these developments inaugurated a shift toward more pragmatic and somewhat more democratic thinking within the movement. Indeed, even this relatively conservative movement contributed to the rebirth of civil society and a degree of civil disobedience in the staid, paternalistic 1950s.

Chaney buttresses this thesis of democratization with a fascinating chapter on the successful effort in the mid-1950s to prevent the damming of the Wutach River gorge in Baden-Württemberg. “By getting behind the seemingly nonpolitical cause of protecting nature and Heimat,” she writes, “people became politicized, identifying themselves as citizens who had rights that ought to be protected and respected” (p. 97). This chapter makes clear that the real aim behind such protest actions was to temper the gathering Wirtschaftswunder, which prioritized industrial growth, the mechanization of agriculture, dam-building and river canalization, and urbanization. That effort continued into the 1960s, during which many leading conservationists saw increased participation in spatial planning (Raumordnung) of the landscape as the key to exerting control over capitalist growth. In a process of what Chaney calls “modernization,” conservationists increasingly made their peace with the state's technocratic efforts “to design the places where people lived, worked, and relaxed into ordered spaces where each individual enjoyed health, prosperity, and dignity” (p. 117). The most tangible result of this cooperation was the nature park program, a public system of recreation areas that essentially prioritized economic growth while paying lip service to Naturschutz.

Chaney continues with a case study that corresponds to this time frame, the campaign to stop the canalization of the Mosel River in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this case the federal government sought friendlier terms with the French (who wanted the canalization) as part of the larger aim of European integration, thus dooming the conservationists' efforts almost from the beginning. Still, even though the canalization proceeded, the movement did have some influence in mitigating its effects on the landscape and water quality of the Mosel. As in the earlier case of the Wutach gorge, then, the result of the controversy was neither simply victory nor defeat, but rather a “partial greening” of state policy.

Such mixed results, according to Chaney, laid the groundwork for a more thorough integration of conservationism into German society beginning in the 1970s. But first the very language of humankind's relationship to nature changed, moving from protecting nature (Naturschutz) to protecting the environment (Umweltschutz). Chaney correctly locates this important shift in 1970, when Brandt's social/liberal coalition government announced an Action Program for the Environment, thereby “inventing ‘the environment’ as a tangible and legitimate sphere for political activity” (p. 177). This, in conjunction with Brandt's admonition to “dare more democracy,” greatly boosted environmentalist thinking at the grass roots and resulted in the founding of myriad citizens' initiatives. Still, the greatest conservationist achievement in this era, the Bavarian Forest National Park (founded in 1970), succeeded not because it gained mass support from a more environmentally aware public, but because the state saw nature tourism as a way to improve the economic fortunes of a “unique, sparsely populated landscape situated in a region in economic trouble” (p. 236). Again we find economic priorities trumping those of Naturschutz. Yet Chaney ends her case study of the national park by pointing out that within a generation, the park had come to be seen as a crowning example of nature preservation.

Chaney's study is one of the best recent works on German conservation. In great detail it traces the gradual development of the movement, attending closely to subtle but fundamental changes in rhetoric. The book is particularly interesting for its case studies, which shed light on the difficulties of strategizing for this small and, for the most part, not particularly popular movement. Sandra Chaney's achievement in Nature of the Miracle Years is to reveal that despite the compromises they had to make, conservationists worked within the democratic system to lay the groundwork for progressive environmentalism and the rise of a popular Green party. Her book is essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of contemporary environmentalism, the evolution of protest movements, and the steady democratization of postwar German society.