Abstract
In the ethnically contested territories of the Prussian east, the concept of the ‘German forest’ meant something quite distinct from what it did on the outskirts of Berlin. Rather than a refuge from the stresses and strains of urban life, the ‘German forest’ functioned in the borderland as a marker of order and German civilization in what many Germans regarded as wild and inhospitable terrain. Indeed, foresters and other authors considering the region displayed widespread ‘environmental chauvinism,’ considering the local populace helpless in the face of extensive deforestation. German foresters would, as self-proclaimed masters of nature, create a healthy, sylvan