Annual topic 2023/24: Terraforming – Planetary Engineering in Art, Literature and Media, 1900-1950

The period from 1900 onwards saw high and low points in the development of German power in many fields: the exploitation of natural and synthetic resources, the rationalization of state administration and biopolitics as well as the (practically useless) naval armament, the defeat in the First World War, the loss of colonial territories, economic crises caused by reparations, inflation and the loss of recently created industrial infrastructure. Against this backdrop, imaginations of massive technological interventions in the environment and society were booming from 1900 onwards: many intellectuals throughout Europe and the USA saw themselves confronted with a new quality of globalization - as a matter of fact, this development became one of the central motivations behind the exploding 'text production' on Terraforming the earth and other planets in art, literature, film and journalism.
For the respective authors, planetary distribution and circulation of technology, energy and capital become the preconditions for a terrestrial reorganization of every future society. Based on this, the theme of the year 2023/2024 focuses on the emergence of imaginations about contemporary and future crisis phenomena of globalization for Germany, Europe and the world. The central question of our theme is therefore the significance of Terraforming in texts that react to an ongoing 'shrinking of the earth' (and its consequences).
For example, Hermann Sörgel's ideas on the regulation of the Mediterranean (Panropa- or later Atlantropa-project, first published in 1929) assume an imminent global political marginalization of Europe between America and Asia, unless Europe could unite with Africa to form a new supercontinent and at the same time tap into new, sustainable sources of energy by making use of Mediterranean hydropower. Alfred Döblin's Berge Meere und Giganten (1924) also deals not least with the scenario of a possible future “Deicing of Greenland” to gain space for the enormously increased World population; despite its fantastic setting, the book was already taken seriously from a diagnostic point of view at the time. In Bernhard Kellermann's novel Der Tunnel (1913), the economic preconditions and imponderables of a gigantic transatlantic tunnel project play a central role. The list could be extended to include texts and films by Hans Dominik, Colin Ross, Richard Oswald and various science fiction authors (e.g. Jack Williamson).

Literature:
Jack Williamson alias Will Stewart: Collision Orbit, in: Astounding Science Fiction, July 82/2, 1942 [Coining of the concept ‚Terraforming‘].
Andy Hahnemann: Texturen des Globalen. Geopolitik und populäre Literatur in der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918-1938. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009.
Chris Pak: Terraforming. Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2016.
Niels Werber: Die Geopolitik der Literatur. Eine Vermessung der medialen Weltraumordnung. München: Hanser, 2007.

Click here for the archive: Annual topic 2022/23: Posthumanismus um 1900/Posthumanism around 1900