mother Nature
As Mother Nature or Mother Earth in is saying that nature (or the environment ) metaphorically personified . Through the figure of the mother , she is assigned a female role. Pictures in which nature is embodied as a woman are well-known and timeless, because motherliness is the basic principle of everything fertile and creative, of wholeness and unity, originality, protection and nutrition. This is expressed in expressions such as “on the bosom of mother nature” or “in the womb of mother earth”. From this basic idea, very different - sometimes quite contradicting - concepts developed throughout history. Often the words are related to life .
The term is sometimes used to complement father state .
history
The phrase "mother earth" is already used in Mycenaean Greek . However, the metaphor only came into greater use around 1770, in the early days of industrialization . It takes place today - translated into the language - in many tongues using, inter alia with Mother Nature and the steam engine by Gerhard Kaiser .
In the 19th century, mother nature was a well-known cliché in the western world , which was picked up and shaped by poets like Hölderlin and Fontane .
"Mother Earth"
“The love of property is like a disease with them (the whites). [...] They claim our mother, the earth, as their property and set themselves apart from their neighbors. They spoil the earth with their buildings and their waste. That people is like a river in spring that overflows its banks and destroys all who stand in its way. "
With respect to the (alleged) Mother Earth philosophy of North American Indians, the expanded environmental movement in the last third of the 20th century the concept to other indigenous peoples and "somehow sacred" made the Mother Earth (in the sense of the entire biosphere ) to a mystical-romantic transfigured symbol for the sustainable use of the world.
For the vast majority of the North American Indian peoples, however, the image of Mother Earth was originally a mundane metaphor; or a collective term to justify their different religious relationships and thus their claim to the land against the white conquerors.
literature
- Sarah Blaffer Hrdy : Mother Nature, the feminine side of evolution (Original title: A History of Mother, Infants, and Natural Selection , translated by Andreas Paul), Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8270-0927-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Irmgard Roebling et al. Wolfram Mauser (Hrsg.): Mother and motherhood: Change and effectiveness of a fantasy in German literature: Festschrift for Verena Ehrich-Haefeli. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1212-7 . Pp. 13, 187-192, 255.
- ↑ see e.g. B. Eva Lang (Ed.): "Mother Nature and Father State" - Future perspectives and approaches to shaping a difficult relationship under the sign of sustainability. , Association for Ecological Economy , Articles and Reports 4/2003, ISBN 3-00-011297-9 ; Gerhard Wolf : In the German poet garden. Poetry between mother nature and father state. Views and portraits. Verlag Luchterhand , 1985; Hans-Jürgen Quadbeck-Seeger: Aphorisms and quotations about nature and science. John Wiley & Sons, 2013, ISBN 978-3-52-733613-5 .
- ↑ ma-ka . In: Palexicon . Open Publishing. Retrieved August 25, 2013.
- ↑ Literary Studies Yearbook, Volume 37, Theodor Berchem Duncker & Humblot, 1996
- ↑ Mother Nature and the Steam Engine, Gerhard Kaiser, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1991, 1st ed.
- ↑ Irmgard Roebling et al. Wolfram Mauser (Hrsg.): Mother and motherhood: Change and effectiveness of a fantasy in German literature: Festschrift for Verena Ehrich-Haefeli. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1212-7 . Pp. 13, 187-192, 255.
- ↑ Quote in TC McLuhan: ... Like the breath of a buffalo in winter. Hoffman and Campe, Hamburg 1984. p. 96.
- ↑ Christian F. Feest : Animated Worlds - The religions of the Indians of North America. In: Small Library of Religions , Vol. 9, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-451-23849-7 . Pp. 55-59, 101.