Public keynote presentations and a panel discussion as part of the international symposium
The Beginning of the Great Transformation and the Calm Before the Storm
Professor Dr. Frank Uekötter (Ruhr University Bochum, Department of History)
The 19th century was a time of rapid change, and no one could be certain where this change would lead. Focusing on Germany, this lecture outlines a period of upheaval in environmental history: changes in agriculture and landscapes, the increasing use of fossil fuels, the growth of major cities bringing new challenges—all accompanied by intense scientific and social debates. It becomes clear just how much the developments that seem central from today’s perspective differed from the perspectives and knowledge of that time. The 19th century seems both familiar and infinitely distant today.
Kinetic Energy – Ecological Mobilization and Social Mobility between Village History and the Realist Novel
Dr. habil. Solvejg Nitzke (Ruhr University Bochum, General and Comparative Literature)
In the 19th century, the village story emerged as a literary form that sought both to impart knowledge and to foster social cohesion. While the program of poetic realism gives form to reality, the aim here is to depict “authentic” ways of life. Together with the various forms that appear in their immediate context—sometimes in the same journal—these texts generate a dynamic energy that makes the connections between text and the world plausible, connections that can still be observed today. Amid mountain meadows and spa towns, environmental destruction and rural exodus, narrative threads thus emerge that this lecture aims to trace.
Panel: Dr. Stephanie Großmann, Privatdozent (Passau); Dr. habil. Solvejg Nitzke (Bochum); Dr. Falko Schnicke, Privatdozent (Linz); Professor Dr. Frank Uekötter (Bochum)
