Introduction: Race and Landscape in Nazi Germany*

Abstract

Abstract This article introduces the themes and contributions of this special issue on Art and Environment in the Third Reich. The work of architect and reformer Paul Schultze-Naumburg is examined as a case study of the aestheticization of ‘race’ and landscape from the Wilhelmine Period to the National Socialism, particularly as it bore on German colonization and settlement projects in eastern Europe. Today’s resurgent far right and environmental crisis, it is argued, lend new urgency to critical interrogation of the relationship between environmental politics and the visual representation of nature under fascism. The articles collected in this issue illustrate a range of interdisciplinary approaches that move beyond iconography to address alternative media, materialities, and environmental history.