ABSTRACT
With regards to the environment, Prussian attitudes have long been characterized by the laissez-faire conception associated with economic liberalism. In Prussia, private forest property became almost entirely free when the government issued in 1811 an edict insuring unrestricted rights to forest owners, permitting partition and conversion of forest estates. The result was, to a large extent, the increase of forest devastation, creating wastes and setting shifting sand in many places within the Kingdom. The involvement of the administration in the reforestation process after 1850, either by planting its own holdings, by purchasing waste lands for this aim, or by sponsoring reforestation by private landowners, shows that the history of Prussian forests and waste lands should be read in terms of a growing interventionism of the state. At the head of the reforestation movement, the Prussian state proudly promoted itself as a tree planter and as partner to other planting groups. By investigating legislation and scientific literature on these questions, the chapter examines the changing attitudes toward reforestation in Prussia. It analyzes the debates that led the regime to shift from a liberal to an authoritarian approach of the forest problem and stresses the role of state-building ideology in this evolution.
