Concepts of Nature in German Art at the Intersection of Colonialism, Lebensreform, and Evolutionary Theory
Discourses of nature and culture were central to German society and formulations of national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was fueled by the rise of the Lebensreform movement and the popularity of homeopathy, the embrace of evolutionary theory and Social Darwinism, the founding of the German Colonial Society in 1882 and the acquisition of colonies beginning in 1884, and the emergence of the anthropological discipline. These developments, however, maintained diverse, even contradictory, opinions associated with the value of nature and Naturvolk. This session aims to explore the entangled attitudes towards nature as revealed in German art and visual culture – whether in the fine arts, illustration, photography, film, or hygiene exhibitions – during the Wilhelmine Empire and the Weimar Republic. Proposals are welcome, for example, that consider the imagery of nature-based lifestyles and race both in the metropole and the colonies for bias towards a celebration or denigration of nature within contexts such as evolutionary hierarchy, urban industrialization, Nacktkultur and health, Imperialism, or ethnography.
Proposals are encouraged with a focus on specific themes and art works as well as frameworks of comparison and contrast. Ideally, these papers could collectively provide resolutions of a dominant orientation within the nature-culture divide. Indeed, the considerable literature on Lebensreform (such as books by Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, Michael Hau, Avi Sharma, Chad Ross, and Kai Buchholz) and German colonialism (books and anthologies by Pascal Grosse, Suzanne Zantop, Eric Ames, Michael Perraudin, and Sebastian Conrad) has not explored the contradictory valuations of natural lifestyles or their implications where they are simultaneously promoted as essential to superior health and well-being in the Lebensreform movement and, in Imperialism, considered to be evidence that colonial Naturvolk, frequently deemed savages, represent the lowest level of human evolution. Because of these differences, art that depicts similar imagery of figures in nature yields opposite meanings depending on their race and place.
The session format will be 4 papers, possibly with a respondent, followed by questions amongst presenters and then the audience.
Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:
Marsha Morton, Pratt Institute,mmorton@pratt.edu