Blood and Soil in the Garden: Growing a German Heimat at Stuttgart’s 1939 Reichsgartenschau

• In Event: Sowing Political Seeds: Gardens, Newcomers, and Nationalisms

Abstract

This paper examines the creation and use of Killesbergpark in Stuttgart, Germany to define, showcase, and popularize Blut und Boden principles in the 1939 Reichsgartenschau (Reich’s garden show). German Blut und Boden leader Richard Walther Darré worked with Nazi forestmeisters (forest masters) and American botanists to display “German gardens,” particularly the heimat (provincial and traditional homeland) of the German state Baden-Würrtemberg, in the park and its accompanying exhibits. The planners of Reichsgartenschau 1939 sought to create a perfect, German utopia for the public to see and celebrate the fruits, figuratively and literally, of their German labor. It was to represent Blut und Boden principles; namely, German men working German soil to grow German plants. This goal, however, was undermined by the garden’s own planning. The site chosen for Killesbergpark was a former quarry that required extensive landscaping. Further, rather than having German men work German soil, Jewish prison labor built the park and the exhibit did not include only German plants, as they included Californian Coast Redwoods and Giant Sequoias. This choice was made as part of the transnational native plants movement, which was tied to both German and US nativist and nationalist movements. The Reichsgartenschau 1939 was not possible without German and Californian botanical and eugenical connections, primarily between conservation groups in bot. The leaders of these groups did not only share their enthusiasm for saving trees; they also desired to save the white race. In turn, the garden and exhibit displayed white nationalist and eugenic principles for public consumption. In this presentation, I argue that the 1939 Reichsgartenschau planners attempted to grow a German heimat identity for the public to consume and emulate.

Author

• Nicky Rehnberg, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)