Thuringia's green heart: a legacy between myth and reality!

Thuringia's green heart: a legacy between myth and reality!

Thüringen, Deutschland - Thuringia plans to promote the tourist marketing of the federal state with the term “green heart of Germany”. CDU parliamentary group leader Andreas Bühl has supported the corresponding initiative of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. This term should not only underline the identity of Thuringia, but also create a recognition value, since current mottos such as "This is Thuringia" and "Discover" Thuringia are criticized by many.

The term "Green Heart of Germany" comes from the writer August Trinius, who first used him in his work "That is of German Fatherland" in 1896. Ten years later, he published the book "The Green Heart of Germany- a hiking trip through the Thuringian Forest", in which he combined hiking and nature descriptions with cultural and historical descriptions. Historian Steffen Raßloff emphasizes Trinius’s floral, emphatic language and his pride in the German homeland and emphasizes that Völkische Passages in Trinius’s work are not recognizable. Trinius died in 1919, 14 years before the beginning of the National Socialist rule.

historical development of the term

The term “green heart” experienced a revival during the Weimar Republic and was used by the tourism authority after the founding of the Free State of Thuringia in 1920. However, the term was also instrumentalized in the period of National Socialism before it disappeared from public awareness in the GDR. With the reunification and foundation of the state of Thuringia in 1990, however, the term was used again.

Thuringia geographically occupies a central location in Germany and extends over 4.5 % of the German area. Impressive 33 % of them are forested, and the state also houses over two thirds of all animal and plant species in Germany. Thuringia plays an outstanding role in biodiversity, for example in the resettlement of the lynx. The term "green heart of Germany" is increasingly being used in natural documentary films, and since 2011 Thuringia has been pursuing a strategy to preserve biological diversity that refers to this term, as the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies.

nature conservationists are calling for a sustainable policy to cope with ecological challenges such as climate change and species deaths and refer to the term “green heart in Germany” as an argument for the development of regional concepts, which underlines the relevance of the term today.

-transmitted by West-Ost-Medien