Wyhl Lessons: Learning from the Most Successful Anti-Nuclear Protest in German History

Environmental Histories of Europe Seminar

Speaker

Alison Frank Johnson
Professor of History, Harvard University; Resident Faculty & Seminar Chair, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Chairs

Lauren Bohm
Ph.D. Candidate in History, Harvard University; Graduate Student Affiliate & Seminar Chair, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), Harvard University

Nikolas Weyland
Ph.D. Student in History, Harvard University; Graduate Student Affiliate & Seminar Chair, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

In the 1960s and 1970s, West Germany hoped that nuclear energy would secure its energy independence until a shocking level of local resistance forced them to abandon plans to erect an energy-producing corridor along the Rhine River. That local resistance centered on the proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl, near the French border. It became the model for Citizens' Initiatives to block government plans, and contributed to the formation of the Green Party. But twenty years later, one leading participant in the Wyhl Protests came to look at the very elements that ensured its success as a sign that Germany wasn't able to face its own past honestly and earnestly. This talk will link the environmental elements of the Wyhl protests to fears of a darker side to Germans' love of the local.

Sponsors

Environmental Histories of Europe Seminar

Directions

This event is being hosted elsewhere on campus, and not by the History Department. To learn more, please see the original event posting.