The development of landscape planning in Germany

Abstract

In the history of German landscape planning, the first half of the last century has a special place. It was the time of the “esonomic land enhancement and land improvement” (ökonomische Landverschönerung und Landverbesserung) which was strongly influenced by the earlier development of the English landscape garden. Associated with the greatest work of this period, two names are especially worthy of note, Gustav Vorherr for his work in Bavaria and Peter Joseph Lennéfor his planning and development in Prussia. The importance of the landscape planning work of Lennéis recognized from the fact that he was already a consultant in railway routing and planting design. He was also involved in the design of “Landwehrgraben”, a canal system in Berlin, he made plans for planting hedges to combat wind erosion on the cropland of large farms, and he designed the scheme “Enhancement of the Potsdam Island” which must be seen as a great landsape work. The reason that these exemplary efforts in land improvement were not continued and even became retrogressive, was the turbulent development of industry, which made its imprint on the face of the second half of the 19th century. As a reaction to this development, there awakened, about the turn of the century, a movement to protect nature. With the establishment of the “Government Office of Natural Landscape Management in Prussia” in the year 1906 — the first office of the present Federal Research Centre for Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology in Bonn-Bad Godesberg—the foundation for the managemnt of landscape was laid. In the year 1935 the “State Nature Conservation Legislation” (Reichsnaturschutzgesetz) was drawn up and is still a valuable legal basis for the protection of nature and landscape. In the year 1929, for the time in Germany, a course of study in garden and landscape planning (architecture) was established at Berlin University. Because of the extension of highway construction, a large number of professional landscape planners were employed in highway construction. It was owing to them that this work on the highways fitted into the landscape, and they created examples of landscape compatible with road construction. Encroachment on the landscape and on natural amenities has become more serious since the reconstruction phase began after the Second World War. It has become more and more clear that it is necessary to make landscape plans not only in terms of land use and town planning, but also in other branches of planning, as a prerequisite for effective measures in landscape planning. More education was needed. The result is that in the Federal Republic of Germany today, diploma engineers in the field of landscape planning are reducated at the Technical University (TU) of Hannover, the TU Munich and the TU of Berlin. In the meantime legislation has also progressed. In six federal state (Bundesländer) new state laws for Nature Conservancy and Landscape Planning have been established in recent years. The laws govern the protection of nature, landscape planning in particular, and encroachment on the landscape. Arising from these laws, new State Institutions for Nature and Environment Protection were established in six federal states. The Federal Institute for Botanical Science, Nature Conservation and Landscape Management in Bonn-Bad Godesberg is now the Federal Centre for Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology, and has three institutes (Botanical Science, Nature Conservation and Wildlife Ecology, Landscape Planning and Landscape Ecology). There is now a major new field of study and scientific research in the ecological resources of landscape planning.