Rooted in Blood and Soil

The landscape architect Alwin Seifert (1890–1972) is regarded as a significant figure in the early ecological movement. From the outset, he intertwined his positions on nature and landscape protection with völkisch (nationalist and populist), racist, and antisemitic notions of a “garden art rooted in the soil.” During his tenure as “Landscape Advocate of the German Reich” under National Socialism, this ideological fusion became fully explicit; in the postwar period, it was increasingly obscured and recoded in the language of conspiratorial worldviews. Within right-wing milieus, these patterns of thought remain operative to this day.