I’m in Marburg, Germany, attending the joint meeting of ATBC & gtoe, two international professional societies dedicated to the study and conservation of tropical forests. I’ve had more than one eyebrow lift in response to this. “Tropical ecology, in Germany?” they ask. Even my German cousins seem unaware of the many excellent ecologists their country has produced. I say to them, what better place for the academy to meet than in a 500-year-old university? What better place to celebrate the adventure of discovery in the tropics than in the homeland of Alexander von Humboldt?
Of course, 200 years ago when Humboldt did the groundbreaking work that gave rise to biogeography, South America was a very different place. The forests were dense, impenetrable, unconquerable. In Humboldt’s time, a conference like this would have been an endless unfolding of discovery after discovery after exciting discovery. Things are different now. The discoveries are still out there waiting to be made, but we have precious little time to uncover them as we rush to save the forests themselves. So now when tropical ecologists get together, in addition to all the exciting discoveries, there is an endless discussion of “What are we to do?”, a sort of intellectual wringing of hands. I’ve heard some hopeful news these past few days, but for the most part the overall scenario is pretty depressing.
So today I decided to play hooky and take a short break from it all. I took the back way up to Landgrassen Castle, walking sunflecked paths through young woods. I spotted a few familiar birds here and there, but otherwise it is an empty forest. The wolves and wisents and all the other interesting creatures that once inhabited Europe are long gone, but it was refreshing and beautiful and a worthy use of my time. I had my lunch at the foot of the castle. Landgrassen is tall but not towering. It sits solid and wide, a stone monument that defies the passage of time. For a moment I thought it would be nice to look for a pamphlet or small book on the history of Marburg, but there is much to be said for simply wandering through the cobblestone streets and absorbing the feel of it all. I like to imagine the echoes of time, and to envision the spirits of all the people who lived and died in this world.
Is history not, in some sense, imagined? I’ll have to pose that question to a true historian some day.
Marburg lies but a few kilometers from the obscure village of Kirchundem, the childhood home of my paternal grandfather. These lands gave birth to the surname “Gastreich” in the 14th century, during the same period Landgrassen Castle was built. My origins, but not my home. Still, there’s something familiar about this place in a deep organic kind of way. The biologist in me might say my methyl groups are buzzing.
I first came to this area in 1975 with my grandfather. I still remember sitting on his lap in the streets below Bitburg Castle. He filled my head with all kinds of fairytales. Or perhaps it is fairer to say he indulged the fantasies of an eight-year-old girl who wanted very much to believe she had something of a Princess inside of her. The first Gastreich lived in Bitburg Castle, and the surname derives from Old German meaning “taster of wines”. So I was told my ancestors had a very noble job, being winekeepers for the counts of Bitburg. Years would pass before I learned more about the reality of those times, at which point it occurred to me the first Gastreich was probably screening for poison.
History in its reality is so much more interesting than our fantasies allow. It is full of heroic, visionary exploits like those of Humboldt. But it is also full of terrible things humans have done to each other over and over and over. Castles exist in part because humans have such a persistent tendency to attack each other with all manner of cruel weapons. Yet castles are beautiful. They inspire awe, imagination, and romantic notions of timeless perspectives. How does one reconcile this paradox of beauty arising from brutality? I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ll ever have the answer to that question. But despite the barbarities of the feudal system that made them possible, I love castles. I look at Landgrassen and I think, “We can do more than destroy. We can build things that last. We can leave monuments of beauty that inspire generation after generation."
We did this with our castles, and I believe we can do it again with our forests.
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