Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany

German environmental organizations have doggedly pursued environmental protection through difficult times: hyperinflation and war, National Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism in the GDR, and confrontation with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. The author recounts the fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of these organizations from their origins at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, not only describing how they reacted to powerful social movements, including the homeland protection and socialist movements in the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, and the anti-nuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but also examining strategies for survival in periods like the current one, when environmental concerns are not at the top of the national agenda. Previous analyses of environmental organizations have almost invariably viewed them as parts of larger social structures, that is, as components of social movements, as interest groups within a political system, or as contributors to civil society. This book, by contrast, starts from the premise that through the use of theories developed specifically to analyze the behavior of organizations and NGOs we can gain additional insight into why environmental organizations behave as they do.

German environmental organizations have doggedly pursued environmental protection through difficult times: hyperinflation and war, National Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism in the GDR, and confrontation with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. The author recounts the fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of these organizations from their origins at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, not only describing how they reacted to powerful social movements, including the homeland protection and socialist movements in the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, and the anti-nuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but also examining strategies for survival in periods like the current one, when environmental concerns are not at the top of the national agenda. Previous analyses of environmental organizations have almost invariably viewed them as parts of larger social structures, that is, as components of social movements, as interest groups within a political system, or as contributors to civil society. This book, by contrast, starts from the premise that through the use of theories developed specifically to analyze the behavior of organizations and NGOs we can gain additional insight into why environmental organizations behave as they do.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Environmental Organizations: Theoretical Considerations
Chapter 2. The Origins of Nature Protection Organizations in Germany: Conservative Reactionaries, Protectors of Nature, and Social Democracy at the Beginning of the Century
Chapter 3. Nazism, the War, and Its Aftermath: The Causes and Consequences of Right Wing Ecology
Chapter 4. Confrontation and Counterculture: Ecology from the Left in a Turbulent Era
Chapter 5. Nature and Environmental Protection Eastern Style: Environmental Organizations in the German Democratic Republic
Chapter 6. New Challenges at Century’s End
Chapter 7. The Social Context of Environmental Organizations at the Beginning of a New Century
Chapter 8. Major Environmental Organizations in Germany: Four Profiles
Chapter 9. Dilemmas of Internal Structure: Professionalization and Centralization
Chapter 10. Dilemmas of Resource Acquisition: The Perils of Fundraising
Chapter 11. Dilemmas of Goals and Strategies: Confrontation, Cooperation, and Competition
Chapter 12. Concluding Observations

References
Index