DEEP ROOTS

IN GERMANY, THE WOODS HAVE BEEN A SOURCE OF MYSTERY AND FASCINATION FOR MILLENNIA. ON A ROAD TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRY'S VERDANT HEART, GISELA WILLIAMS FINDS OUT WHY THAT REVERENCE FOR THE FORESTS MAY OFFER LESSONS FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD.

- GISELA WILLIAMS

IN THE WINTER OF 1777, the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe set off on horseback from his home in the central German city of Weimar and travelled a hundred miles north to the forests of the Harz region. The 28-year-old Goethe, who had been struggling since the death of his sister the previous summer, hoped to encounter a sign. On December 10, accompanied by a forester, he climbed the Brocken, a mountain in the Harz that is, at almost 1,219 metres, the highest in northern Germany. Visiting this snowy, densely wooded landscape left him exhilarated and renewed; the experience later inspired the poem "Harzreise im Winter." 

An altar of grateful delight

He finds in the much-dreaded mountain’s

Snow-begirded summit,

Which foreboding nations

Crown’d with spirit-dances.

The story of Goethe’s bracing journey would become a cultural touchstone, epitomising Germany’s fascination with its wilds and woodlands. Unlike in Japan, where the tradition of forest-bathing involves the quiet contemplation of light and shadow, the Germans wrestle with the forest as if it were their own spirit. From Germania, Tacitus’s first-century description of the Germans, to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the forest has long been integral to the national identity.

This connection between nature and culture has galvanised the country to position itself at the forefront of the environmental movement. One-third of Germany is woodland, and while most of that area is planted with trees that are harvested for timber, more trees are planted than are felled.