現代德國文化與自然――20世紀初大都會柏林為例

Nature and Modern Urban Culture in Germany—The Case of the Metropolis Berlin in the Early Twentieth Century

德國人認為他們與自然間存在著一種特殊關係，這樣的思維不僅見諸中世紀傳說，也在現代以不同樣貌充分展現。現代文明進程中最受矚目的工業化發展，是一個不斷重新定義人與自然的關係的過程。17世紀以降，普魯士在領地上成功填澤造地，透過現代工業科技整頓河流、森林、濕地等，以構築道路、橋梁、工廠、居所，「征服自然」，促成都會發展與商業利益。這樣的氛圍在19世紀初期，歷經法國大革命與拿破崙戰爭的挑戰與刺激以後，轉而成為保家衛國論述所擁護的環境保育或「保衛自然」訴求，並有效地以國族認同模式浮現，也是20世紀第三帝國納粹政治宣傳中不斷被挪用與再現的主題。這使得現代城市與自然間時而曖昧融洽互相依存、時而掠奪的緊張關係更顯複雜。20世紀初期現代德國大都會裡蓬勃建設的建築叢林中，自然與城市的邊際線在都會史與環境史的脈絡下如何被定義？

Germans believed that there was a special relationship between their people and nature. Such thoughts not only appeared in medieval legends, but also were manifested in various ways in the modern era. The idea of“conquering nature”has never been absent in the process of industrialization and nation-building that have attracted the most attention in the process of modernization of human civilization. The formation of a modern industrial country such as Germany is a process of actively re-defining and re-adjusting its relation with nature, which includes, from the 17th century onwards, the use of modern industrial technology in Prussia to tame rivers, forests, and wetlands, and to build roads, bridges, factories, houses, and to carry out urban development and cater to commercial interests. After experiencing the challenges presented by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century, this attitude towards nature turned into an appeal for environmental protection or“protecting nature”supported by the Heimatschutz movements, which emerged in the national movement effectively as a part of national identity. The themes of protecting the fatherland and national identity were constantly appropriated and reproduced in the Nazi political propaganda of the Third Reich in the twentieth century. This phenomenon made the sometimes ambiguous, harmonious, and sometimes tense relationship between modern cities and nature even more complicated. Inevitably, the city sometimes lives on nature and sometimes plunders it. Amid the jungle of buildings in the booming modern German cities, how was the boundary between nature and city defined in the discourse of the urban history and the environmental history?