Narrating Disruptive Encounters in the Forest: Hunting, Animal Lives, and Ecology

Authors

  • Helga Braunbeck North Carolina State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2024.15.2.5357

Keywords:

hunting, anthropomorphism, Felix Salten, Horst Stern, Peter Wohlleben

Abstract

Over the last century, three popular writers and media personalities have written bestsellers and created TV programs in order to alert the general public to the suffering of wild animals as well as the deleterious effects on young trees caused directly or indirectly by hunting and forestry practices. Austrian journalist and writer Felix Salten published Bambi: A Story of Life in the Woods (1923), using a baby deer’s perspective. German journalist and literary author Horst Stern shocked the nation with his TV program Remarks about the Stag (1971), which shows the brutality of hunting; his 1989 Jagdnovelle (The Last Hunt) weaves together a hunter’s perspective with his prey animal’s experience. In recent years, German forester Peter Wohlleben has shifted the focus from animals to plants by publishing a series of popular books about the forest, starting with The Hidden Life of Trees (2015). This essay examines how Salten, Stern, and Wohlleben all humanize their animal and plant characters, including through a form of “critical anthromorphism” (Mossner)—and are criticized for it. They also incorporate ethology, i.e. observations of animal behavior and the forest environment, as well as scientific knowledge, as they attempt to evoke their audience’s empathy for their nonhuman characters. Hunting pressure and the violent disruption of the lives of the animals leads to an “ecology of fear” instead of an “ecology of subjects” that would align better with changing perceptions of “nature” (Soentgen). Ethical questions concerning the mass killing of Europe’s largest mammals remain as it does not succeed in reducing deer overpopulation or damage to the forest ecosystem, perpetuing Germany’s forest/game conflict.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Helga Braunbeck, North Carolina State University

Helga G. Braunbeck holds degrees in German and English Literature and Linguistics from the University of Tübingen, University of Oregon, Eugene, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is Professor of German Studies at North Carolina State University, and has also served as Director of International Studies, and as Assistant Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies. She has published two books: Autorschaft und Subjektgenese: Christa Wolfs Kein Ort Nirgends (1992), and Figurationen von Kunst, Musik, Film und Tanz: Intermedialität bei Libuše Moníková (2018). Her current research program is situated in the environmental humanities, with a special focus on contemporary literary and cultural plant and animal studies. Recently published articles can be found in the journals Literatur für Leser:innen, Humanities, and Gegenwartsliteratur, and in various collections. She is co-author of the editorial for a Green Letters special issue on “Arboreal Imaginaries” (2022). Her articles cover topics such as literary and cultural aspects of gardening, trees, lichen, lignite extractivism, sisters, Klaus Modick's novella Moos, Christa Wolf, Libuše Moníková, Niklas Maak's novel Technophoria, hunting and forest ecology, and third nature poetics in the work of Poschmann and Kinsky.

Downloads

Published

2024-10-30

Issue

Section

Articles:Disruptive Encounters.Concepts of care and Contamination out of Control