New German-language Nature Writing and the Language of Resonance and Reflection

Nature writing is traditionally a genre of non-fictional, essayistic writing which combines vivid natural descriptions, profound introspection and ethical musings. Since 2000, the New Nature Writing (NNW) has emerged in Europe rejecting the escapist, heroic and sometimes nationalist conventions of the original American genre. This article analyses three examples from German New Nature Writing (NNW) from the early 2000s: Laubwerk. Zur Poetik des Stadtbaums (‘The Poetics of the Urban Tree’) by Marion Poschmann (2018), Hafen von Greifswald (‘Port of Greifswald’) by Judith Schalansky (2018), and Wurzelstudien (‘Root Studies’) by Anna Ospelt (2020). As with its British counterpart, German NNW is characterised by ‘an attitude of mindfulness’ (Goldstein 2018) and a poetic perception of nature, and is filled with ‘protest energy’ (Fischer 2019). Our paper will argue that, despite the very distinct approaches of the authors, these texts demonstrate an astonishing similarity in their quest for a ‘language of resonance’ between humans and the plant co-world and in their creation of new spaces of nature-cultural resonances.