A planet is looted

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A planet is plundered - The horror of our politics is a non-fiction book published in September 1975 by Herbert Gruhl, Member of the Bundestag at the time . After the Club of Rome showed the " limits of growth " on our earth, Gruhl asked in this book about the remaining possibilities of our economic activity.

central message

In his book published in 1975, Herbert Gruhl looked for the causes of the looting of the ecological foundations of human life, which he saw in the ideology of growth (both capitalism and communism ), and recommended abstinence and moderation instead of consumerism . Gruhl also attached great importance to the global population growth for the looting of the planet . Initiatives were given here for environmental policy measures such as an ecological tax reform . Forcing technical environmental protection and other environmental policy measures alone will remain inadequate. A “planetary turnaround” is required, that is, man must “think and act based on the limits of the earth”.

Gruhl's own assessment of whether “politicians or large parts of the people understand the situation”, that is, abandon the growth path of the economy and population, is cautious: “Perhaps the call will still reach the moving trains - although our assessment is more that of the French poet Eugène Ionesco comes close ”, who said there was“ no way out ”.

Impact history

Herbert Gruhl presented his book to the press on September 25, 1975, explaining that he differentiated the broad time horizons of nature's production method from the “short-term production of man”, which with its “gigantic successes” creates its own “defeats” and with it make a "horror record of our politics" necessary. The prevailing policy makes use of a concept of growth which is completely inadequate to describe the inorganic mode of production. Gruhl was sure to hit the sensitive nerve of today with his writing "like a sharp knife".

At the top of the Union, Gruhl fell on deaf ears with his "terrible balance sheet", but the book quickly developed into a bestseller and received mostly positive feedback across party lines. It reached a total circulation of over 400,000 copies and laid the "foundation stone" for the fischer alternative paperback series . The environmental issues discussed by Gruhl led him to the head of the BUND in November 1975, and in 1978 meant the break with the CDU and the co-initiation of environmental parties.

Even today, many politicians from the ecologically oriented spectrum say that this book was the trigger for their commitment to environmental protection. Reinhard Loske , for example, is of the opinion that it should be understood as “one of the most important founding documents of the Green Party”, while Bärbel Höhn speaks of a “real eco bestseller” and considers the “planetary turnaround” called for in it to be essential. On November 15, 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel thanked Ole von Beust for his work as a member of the executive committee and environmental officer of the CDU with an edition of Gruhl's bestseller. And the chairman of the largest German environmental initiative of the BAUM eV economy , Maximilian Gege, called reading Gruhl's work a "key experience" and considers it to be "more topical than ever".

Critics of the book accused Gruhl of calling for an “eco-dictatorship”, which he denied: “I [Gruhl] examined the possibility of total world government in 'A planet is plundered', with the result that it is neither feasible still desirable. The accusation that I [Gruhl] had demanded an [eco] world dictatorship there has been sucked out of their red fingers by some ignoramuses. ”In recent literature it is emphasized that political competition conditions promote misinterpretations. In retrospect, Erhard Eppler thinks that books could make an (ecological) change in consciousness linguistically and thus politically capable, which “Herbert Gruhl probably did best”.

History of the creation of the work

As a CDU environmental politician, Herbert Gruhl had dealt intensively with the then new policy field from 1970. In 1972 he received the unpublished, English-language manuscript of The Limits to Growth . The later "ridiculous objections" to this work led Gruhl to write his own book on the subject and, in this context, to explain the US environmental policy in more detail. Gruhl sent his manuscript to Carl Amery , who was very impressed and tried to convey it to the Rowohlt Verlag. However, these efforts were unsuccessful. It was then S. Fischer Verlag that published the book A Planet is Plundered - the horror of our politics , not least on the initiative of the Frankfurt journalist and editor Henrich von Nussbaum . He initiated a series of books with the same layout at Fischer-Verlag, in which Gruhl's work was published as the second volume - and became one of the main “pullers” at the founding conferences of the GREEN party.

expenditure

Herbert Gruhl :

  • A planet is looted. The horror of our politics. S. Fischer, Ffm. 1975, ISBN 3-100286014 . (For 2 weeks in 1976 at number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list )
  • A planet is looted. The horror of our politics. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Ffm. 1978, ISBN 3-596240069 .
  • A planet is looted. The horror of our politics. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1977 for various book clubs.

A Greek translation was published in 1982 by NOTOS and a Japanese translation in 1984 by Tōkyō Sōgensha, in Belgrade by Prosveta publishing house in 1985 one in Serbian / Croatian. The British media group of the politician and publisher Robert Maxwell acquired the rights to an English edition, but it was not published.

See also

literature

  • Volker Kempf: Herbert Gruhl - pioneer of environmental sociology. In the field of tension between scientific knowledge and political reality . Ares-Verlag , Graz 2008, ISBN 978-3-902475-47-3 .
  • Jürgen Wüst: Conservatism and the ecological movement. An investigation into the tension between party, movement and ideology using the example of the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP) . IKO - Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-88939-275-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kai Schlegelmilch: The revenue-neutral ecological tax reform. About Herbert Gruhl's pioneering work and today's practice, in: Naturkonservativ heute. Yearbook of the Herbert Gruhl Society 2003, Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 2003, pp. 117–128, here pp. 123ff.
  2. ^ Gruhl, blurb
  3. ↑ Gruhl, p. 26f.
  4. ↑ Herbert Gruhl: On the occasion of the publication of my book 'Ein Planet wird plünder' (1975), in: Naturkonservativ heute. Yearbook of the Herbert-Gruhl-Gesellschaft eV 2005, Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 2005, pp. 15–18, here p. 15f.
  5. ↑ a b Wüst, p. 152.
  6. ↑ 2002 publisher's announcement on the history of the fischer alternative series , quoted in after reprint, in: Naturkonservativ heute. Yearbook of the Herbert Gruhl Society 2003, Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 2003, p. 134.
  7. ↑ in the time 2000 cited. n. Laudation for the award of the Herbert Gruhl Prize to Reinhard Loske ( memento of the original from January 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.herbert-gruhl.de
  8. ↑ Bärbel Höhn: A real eco bestseller. Deutschlandradio December 7, 2009 [1]
  9. ↑ Chancellor gives Ahlhaus a farewell present for von Beust [2]
  10. ↑ The manager among nature conservationists , a portrait of Maximilian Geges, in: Hamburger Abendblatt, September 3, 2011, p. 10 [3]
  11. ↑ Herbert Gruhl: Ascension into nowhere . Munich 1993, p. 357.
  12. ↑ Kempf, pp. 105–118: A planet is plundered. especially p. 116 f.
  13. ↑ Erhard Eppler: A solidarity performance society. Change of epoch after the embarrassment of the market liberals. Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 2011, p. 17.
  14. ↑ Herbert Gruhl: Survival is everything. Memories. Munich 1987, p. 154.
  15. ↑ from 146th to 152nd thousand 1984 with a new foreword and the note "revised edition"
  16. ^ Overview of book development in the DNB.
  17. ↑ See Kempf, p. 16.