Pieck, Sonja. Mnemonic ecologies: memory and nature conservation along the former Iron Curtain. 290 pp., bibliogr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2023. $45.00 (paper)

The Cold War-era German borderlands, having been methodically deforested, mowed, and flattened to construct one of the most notorious militarized demarcation borders in the twentieth century, are the site of Sonja Pieck's study in Mnemonic ecologies. Despite their morbid past, these lands became an unlikely candidate for one of Europe's most ambitious ecological conservation projects. The emergence of continuous shrublands necessary for the construction of the inner-German border gave way to the creation of novel ecosystems of endangered flora and fauna that had been displaced by increasing urbanization across Germany. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, conservationists sought to protect these new ecosystems, creating the German Green Belt nature reserve largely administered by the NGO Bund Naturschutz (BUND). The book investigates the intersection of memory and ecology along Germany's Green Belt by utilizing the author's novel framework, ‘mnemonic ecologies’. Mnemonic ecologies are ‘a way of conceptualizing the complex and mutual entanglements of emergent ecosystems and historical memory’ (p. 9). How does environmental management react to, reflect, produce, and perpetuate human expressions of memory and memorialization? How does conservation incorporate both past and living trauma, and how can it learn to adapt as attitudes towards the role of human memory in nature change? Such issues arising from the convergence of memory and ecological conservation are the focus of the monograph. Pieck's analytical framework of mnemonic ecologies is introduced in chapter 1, inviting readers to think critically of memory in relation to restoration and nature. The reader is encouraged, with the example of layered landscapes, to reconsider preconceived ideas of conservation and ‘natural’ nature. Chapter 2 takes a deep dive into the history of the Green Belt project and the border, explaining the former Iron Curtain's unique ecology as a host for important biodiversity and its ensuing attractiveness for German conservationists. The concept of heimat is explored in chapter 3 as ‘a cultural landscape codified as homeland’ (p. 11) that defined German nature conservation in the early nineteenth century and underlined German relationships to the land as an imagined rural idyll. In the 1970s, radical movements seeking to promote science-based environmental protection arose in opposition to heimat as the concept came to be increasingly viewed as redolent of Germany's ultranationalist past. The chapter explores those tensions and their respective influences on the formation of the Green Belt. This opposition outlined the emerging necessity of re-engaging human memories and culture in ecological conservation. This is discussed in chapter 4 through modes of narrative ecological memorialization and storytelling in relation to the Green Belt, focusing on landscape art, ruins, and a book with its associated travel series. In chapter 5, Pieck draws on two seemingly opposing philosophies of environmental management, those of rewilding according to ancient ecologies and restoration according to human activity, to demonstrate how ecology can fulfil and perpetuate human notions and exactions of memory. Chapter 6 touches on global case studies of conservation-related intersections of ecology and memory including in Colombia, Cambodia, and Korea. Pieck's research is cognizant of the importance of the borderlands for communities’ memorialization of the trauma wrought by division while recognizing the agencies of non-human actors in constructing memorial landscapes. Given its multidisciplinary scope and dual focus on both nature conservation and historical memorialization, the text relies mainly on theorization rather than deep ethnography. Pieck's further analysis of the political undertones of conservation means that she justifiably draws on interviews conducted largely with individuals associated with BUND. An in-depth study of the stakeholders might have been interesting to understand the struggles of those opposed to BUND, particularly the former inhabitants of border villages attempting a post-war return. Moreover, the study importantly demonstrates how the Green Belt has become a proxy for German national trauma through different avenues of expression; it would thus be interesting to connect this academic venture to popular understandings of the Cold War in Germany. Mnemonic ecologies is an optimistic yet critical contribution to the field of conservation, successfully stitching together ecological conservation and memory studies. It is uniquely poised to enrich the libraries of a wide variety of readers, straddling multiple fields of expertise and levels of practical experience owing to the wide implications it exacts on ecological conservation practice, the memorialization of human trauma and understandings of ecological-human relations. It is distinctly accessible and easily comprehensible, though its deeply situated theorizations might be better appreciated by upper-level undergraduates and above. All readers will walk away from this book with a refreshed perception of nature and human relationships.