Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in ... - Dumbarton Oaks

“TEUTONIC” TRENDS
tween the German people and nature was reflected in natural landscape design. Using the examples
of the Grove of the Saxons and the cemeteries of Seelenfeld and Hilligenloh, it has been
shown how concepts of natural garden design in Germany were highly influenced by nationalistic
and racist ideas. Several questions that arise in connection with this topic are: What should a
society do with particular sites such as the Grove of the Saxons? Are they a potential task for
historic preservation? Or should one tear them down as exemplifications of Nazi landscape
design ideology and as gathering places for an army of terror? Would such a way of dealing with
history and memory foster democratic forces in German society?
I believe that destruction would not be the right answer. On a professional level, the Grove
of the Saxons and its history give evidence of how deeply involved individual landscape architects
were in supporting the Nazi regime. One can use such sites to illustrate the way that these
landscape architects realized their ideas about race, the German people, and their relation to
nature and history in a landscape design that corresponded to Nazi ideology and the goals of the
Nazi regime. They are proof that landscape architecture is not a profession that exists and develops
independently of the political situation in a society. They are proof that “natural” garden
design is “ideological” garden design, and they can help to decipher the character of this ideology.
The mere design of the Grove of the Saxons could probably not evolve racist or nationalistic
thinking. That requires a complex set of ideas on the various levels of a society, affecting each
sphere of social and cultural life and human existence. But as part of such a complex system, sites
such as the Grove of the Saxons were highly effective in a very subtle way.
It is clear that landscape architects give form to the world of ideas, to ideologies. This leads
back to the topic of this volume, “Nature and Ideology,” and to the origin of the word ideology.
It consists of the two parts: idea and logos. Idea originally meant form, archetype; and logos originally
meant reasoned speech or discourse. 72 Ideology interpreted in this original sense—the
reasoned discourse about forms—is a fundamental requirement of future landscape architecture.
72 I am indebted to Lee Sherry for this reference; cf. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1989, 7:613 f;
8:1113.
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