"Der kranke Planet". Populäre Imaginationen von Natur in der Bundesrepublik der 1980er Jahre

What was the public understanding of Nature in the 1980s? What were the individual duties to protect Nature? And why was it common to describe Planet Earth as a sick patient that had to be cured from its manifold diseases such as the pollution of the seas, nuclear disasters, the “Waldsterben” and others? This thesis investigates how the concept of “Nature”, understood as a guiding principle of human orientation, was conceived in a specific historical situation, the “era of ecology”. It deals with the concepts of “nature”, “environment” and “ecology”, follows their intellectual roots and develops the thesis, that the combination of romantical imagination, technological thinking and pantheism led to paradigmatic and paradox claim of going back to nature by going forward by means of technology.