Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 179 Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future Joela Jacobs The University of Arizona Abstract: By drawing on the virtual archive of German news media, this article shows how Willkommenskultur is interacting with Vergangenheitsbewältigung in public discourses about the “refugee crisis” of 2015, taking into account similar crises of solidarity in 1945 and 1992� While some of the media examples highlight shared experiences between refugees in 1945 and 2015, others demand to “do better” than in 1992, which yet others take to be an attempt at atonement, or even redemption for Nazi deeds. Rightwing voices call for a Schlussstrich instead, invoking the vocabulary of Vergangenheitsbewältigung while rejecting it, as they do refugees� But racism arises not only from this direction: Umweltschutz has taken on widespread national pride, which shows in the white saviorism of environmental education initiatives, where well-meaning volunteers teach the supposedly homogenous blank slate of “the refugee.” This makes environmentalism appear more pertinent for “integration” than the planet at times, and Umweltschutz emerges as a Moralkeule that stops complicated conversations about racism and environmentalist efficacy. The media archive therefore demonstrates that public discourses about the German past are inextricably bound up with the present and future, and it reminds us that environmentalism needs to be practiced and taught with attention to social justice. Keywords: environmental culture, environmentalism, environmental racism, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, refugees, refugee crisis, Willkommenskultur The influx of refugees into Germany since 2015 has prompted the creation of a variety of initiatives geared at their orientation in German society and culture. Funded by federal money but conducted mainly by volunteers, a whole subset of these programs is focused on environmental education and the protection of 180 Joela Jacobs nature. As I have shown elsewhere ( Jacobs) and will briefly reestablish with the help of one example in the first part of this article, the online self-presentations and news media depictions of these well-intended initiatives inadvertently reveal the problematic notion of a specific kind of German environmentalism as the path to a one-sided “integration” (a problematic concept in itself), which can mobilize a metaphorical repertoire in which refugees are equated with trash that has yet to find its way into the correct recycling category in order to fit into the system productively. From the digital archive I examined, environmentalism emerges as a culturally mediated concept that can be instrumentalized in social discourses about national identity� In the main part of this article, I discuss what one might call the moral implications of this contemporary situation by examining a local, historically-oriented dimension, namely German Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which ties into a global, future-facing aspect, namely the social and ecological elements of environmentalism: On the local level, this involves the complicated connections between contemporary refugees and the first “refugee crisis” in Germany after 1945, which has the potential to bring citizens and new arrivals together over a shared experience of the violence of war and flight as well as the accompanying losses and resource scarcity. For some, the guilt of the Holocaust as well as the violent German response to the second “refugee crisis” of the early 1990s seem to create a moral imperative to do better this time. This linking of the past and present triggers resentment in those who have been arguing for a Schlussstrich under the German Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or dealing with the Nazi past, which we see most clearly among supporters of the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland� But even outside of the right-leaning spectrum, the invocation of the Holocaust can produce the problematic notion that the positive engagement in this third “refugee crisis” somehow issues a pardon for the misdeeds of the past. And despite the best intentions, when citizens volunteer to teach presumably “illiterate” others about how to behave in their culture, it can go along with a sense of moral superiority and activate a variety of the white savior complex. This resurfaces in media reporting about the environmental education initiatives, on which my analysis draws as a digital archive of cultural discourses about national identity, since environmentalism appears to be one of the few areas of life (soccer being another example) in which Germans currently allow for a form of national pride. While questions of national identity and environmentalism traditionally appear as two separate realms, digital media (such as the online newspapers and program websites I examined) provide an alternative, noncanonical archive that undermines this separation and shows many ways in which these two discourses are intertwined in what I call cultural environmentalism� Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 181 These complex moral entanglements of social and environmental dimensions in Germany speak to an emerging global question in the context of climate migration that Ghassan Hage has articulated in Is Racism an Environmental Threat? (2017). By showing that racism and environmentalism emerge from and reproduce some of the same social structures, Hage has answered this question with a resounding yes. Given that many of the refugees in Germany are Muslim (or assumed to be), Hage’s particular focus on Islamophobia resonates with the German situation (Weber; Plumly), both regarding the notion of a sociocultural conversion of Germany prompted by the influx of refugees from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds and in view of the particular postwar relationship of Germans and Jews in this context. The digital news archive of recent years includes, for instance, many pieces describing instances or just fears of renewed anti-Semitism brought by Muslim refugees to Germany, dovetailing with a discussion of the future of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and German identity (Schenk). This discourse of concern often fails to account for the problem of homegrown anti-Semitism, expressed by German anti-refugee and anti-Muslim voices such as those of the Pegida movement (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, founded in late 2014) and the AfD (Meisner). This disjunction of discourses is an example of a larger tendency of placing the onus of adaptation one-sidedly on refugees rather than conceiving of the ongoing societal shifts as a complex, heterogeneous process that requires German culture to change too. The same misconception of one-sided adaption and its moral implications are also apparent in the otherwise largely uncontroversial environmental education programs — both on their own program websites (sometimes mediated through a parent organization and mostly directed at fellow or prospective volunteers rather than refugees) and in national as well as local media reporting about them (ranging from traditional newspaper articles to video formats, all of which predominantly seem to address an imagined autochthonous German audience). These digital media depictions therefore turn out to be an alternative, noncanonical archive of cultural discourses that negotiate issues of German identity past, present, and future in both its social and ecological dimensions. In order to substantiate this claim, I will first briefly close read an example of one of these local newspaper depictions that I have discussed in depth in a previous analysis ( Jacobs), so as to establish common metaphors and ideas that are typical for many of these articles� In the second part, I turn to the historical context of the “three refugee crises” in order to flesh out my larger argument about Vergangenheitsbewältigung, before drawing two sets of conclusions from this work — one about environmentalism and social justice, and the other about the archive� 182 Joela Jacobs German Environmentalism as Kulturgut in Contemporary Society “In Deutschland ist Mülltrennung zum Kulturgut geworden,” states the CEO of a municipal waste company in an article in the local, Northern German paper Eckernförder Zeitung, in order to explain why his company is sponsoring a recycling course for refugees in 2015 (Messerschmidt). This program is one of many initiatives for the environmental education of refugees that primarily took place between 2015 and 2017 (“Umweltbildung und BNE mit Flüchtlingen”), some financed by the government and some by foundations (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt; “Integrationsprojekte auf einen Klick”), others organized by churches, environmental organizations, and volunteer groups, and some supplied by local waste companies, schools, and all kinds of Vereine (“Alle Projekte von A bis Z”). The large investment in environmental education by so many different groups and its prize-winning successes (“Auszeichnung für das Geflüchteten-Projekt”) confirm the CEO’s words about the centrality of environmentalism as a cultural value in Germany, and much of the news reporting about these initiatives suggests that mastering the performance of specific environmental actions, such as recycling, is considered a measure of “integration” success for new arrivals� The specific culture of environmentalism that is transmitted in these courses is therefore tied to an assumption of providing a path to “integration,” comparable to learning about and abiding by culturally specific understandings of politeness or physical touch, for instance. Its validity and efficacy both as an environmental strategy and a cultural value are not typically questioned, though its economic implications, specifically taxpayer cost, are occasionally discussed ( Jacobs 190). As I have shown in more detail previously by close reading these programs’ self-depictions on their websites and in news articles from across the political and geographic spectrum ( Jacobs), the assumption of many of these well-intended initiatives is that refugees come without environmental knowledge, that there is only one way to save the environment (a complex German-specific system that puts the onus on the individual), and that the mastery of this system is a requirement to earn respect and acceptance in German society. If refugees or asylum seekers do not abide by these rules, they are themselves often described as being societally out of place in the media, becoming associated with unrecycled refuse, such as in the beginning of this example article about “Recyclingkurse für Migranten,” published 2016 in Bayerischer Rundfunk, a regional public service broadcast for southern Germany: Es ist leider ein vertrautes Bild: Auf dem Gelände einer Flüchtlingsunterkunft im Landkreis Fürstenfeldbruck liegt Müll. Verteilt auf den Wegen, zwischen den Fahrrädern, die vor dem Haus abgestellt sind und im Rasen rund um das Gebäude. Sogar außerhalb des Zaunes liegt der Abfall. Papier, Plastiktüten, Verpackungsmaterial. Die Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 183 Mülltonnen quellen über. In ihnen stecken sämtliche Überreste westlichen Konsumalltags. Ungetrennt! Zugegeben, auch die Einheimischen sind nicht immer Musterknaben im Müllvermeiden und Mülltrennen. Aber Menschen aus anderen Kulturen kennen weder die Regeln dafür, noch deren Sinn. Und das kann zu Problemen führen. (Hackl n. pag.) This seemingly “familiar sight” of trash around asylum housing and the indignation of the exclamation “Ungetrennt! ” are connected to ominously stated “problems” with refugees that seem to go beyond a lack of recycling. “People from other cultures” are said to have “no sense” for environmentalism and by extension the culture to which it seems to “belong,” which positions them as Others who are unwilling to learn and do not care about “the right way of doing things�” This attribution of blame makes asylum seekers appear as a homogenous group of supposed environmental transgressors, instead of a culturally diverse group grappling with a host of immediate survival and comprehension issues in a new country� No mind is paid to other possible reasons for the trash problem, such as insufficient pick-up and overcrowded conditions, for which the German state would be responsible. In addition, the “natives” (Einheimische) get away with a slap on the wrist for “not always being a poster child of recycling and reducing either,” while those who arrived with no more than what they could carry on their backs are accused of overindulging in “Western consumerism�” Many of the media depictions of environmental education initiatives (especially in the local and regionally oriented news) emphasize these points with similar choices of visual and metaphorical materials ( Jacobs), in which recycling becomes a metaphor for separating “what does not belong together,” just like asylum housing keeps “people from other cultures” separate from Germans. According to these pieces, the solution to overcoming this separation is for new arrivals to learn “the rules and their meaning.” The same article later cites environmental project organizer Birgit Baindl, who puts it this way: “Wer die Werte unserer Gesellschaft kennenlernt, wer versteht wie auch unsere Ressourcen geschützt werden, der wird Teil dieser Gesellschaft. Und umgekehrt wird der von der Gesellschaft geachtet. Weil die Menschen dann sehen, die Neuankömmlinge teilen diese Werte mit Ihnen [sic] und setzen sie auch engagiert um” (qtd. in Hackl n. pag.). These sentences make the refugees’ successful “integration” a condition for their respectful treatment in German society. In effect, Baindl suggests that those who do not “understand how to protect our resources” (another ominously vague statement) do not become part of German society and therefore should not expect respect. This discussion of environmental practices is all about preserving cultural values and expectations for social interactions, rather than saving the planet. In citing Frau Baindl, the article is typical of the 184 Joela Jacobs program websites and news reports of these programs, which rarely feature refugee voices. If they do, the few quoted refugee participants are often addressed by their first names only, denying the respect of the formal address granted to the German officials in the same piece. 1 With their general insistence on the refugee as an environmental blank slate, who “knows neither the rules nor their meaning,” articles like this one not only assume that knowing how to recycle in Bavaria is equivalent to being an environmentalist and by extension a morally good person everywhere in the world; they also ignore that the experience of effects of climate change is often a central factor in migration and that refugees know resource scarcity and conservation needs first-hand. Rather than turning toward the world by involving refugees in the shaping of such environmental initiatives, as I suggested previously ( Jacobs), media depictions of these programs by and large paint a picture of German culture as being about the ability to navigate a complex and idiosyncratic recycling system (whose color-coded system varies by region and can therefore easily stump “natives” too). Indeed, being able to master this system seems to be a shibboleth for belonging in German culture, a litmus test with moral implications that casts those who fail out of the circle of respect� Given the rise of anti-refugee sentiment in Germany since my first examination of these dynamics, which shows in the success of the Pegida movement and high number of votes for the right-wing party AfD in the 2017 election, the need for critical debate and a broader historical contextualization of these complicated connections, which I am undertaking here next, has only increased in urgency� A History of Three “Refugee Crises” The influx of what is often cited as over one million people into Germany in 2015 has widely been labeled as “the refugee crisis” in the media (Feld et al. 24). Alternative suggestions, such as “solidarity crisis” (Ki-moon), move the burden from the refugees to the entire human community, but retain the alarmist notion of the crisis rather than characterizing migration as a not-so-new reality that has been happening at the doorsteps of Western countries for a long time� Similarly, while talk about the environmental, ecological, or climate crisis is appropriate in drawing attention to the urgency of the planet’s dire situation, the sense of momentariness of the term “crisis” nonetheless seems like a mismatch for the Anthropocene’s only intensifying status quo, which has been known for a long time too� In his examination of Islamphobia as an environmental threat, Ghassan Hage discusses the entanglement of ecological and social factors of these two “crises” and argues that “Racism is an environmental threat because it reinforces and reproduces the dominance of the basic social structures that Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 185 are behind the generation of the environmental crisis — which are the structures behind its own generation” (14). As mutually reinforcing harbingers of “crises,” xenophobia and environmental anxiety co-construct ideas about refugees in Germany that are reinforced in a variety of ways both from the right and the left of the political spectrum under the specter of the “crisis.” 2 Racist stereotypes and environmental concerns converge on many, perhaps unexpected fronts, whether it is fearmongering by right-wing populists that claim that refugees and asylum seekers are hunting local birds for food and render them extinct (Redaktion), or whether it is leftist alarm about refugees and asylum seekers polluting the environment because they do not recycle (Hackl). Thus, to approach Hage’s claim from another direction, I argue that environmentalism can turn into a racist threat� 3 The current “refugee crisis” is not the first of this magnitude (Stokes), and German debates of the topic draw on history in ways that are instructive both for the environmental and the social components under discussion� In the aftermath of the Second World War and again in the 1990s after the fall of the Iron Curtain and in the context of violent conflicts in the Balkan region, large numbers of people were seeking a temporary or permanent home in Germany. The immediate postwar years saw an influx of ca. 11.9 million Germans (Heimatvertriebene) from formerly German communities in Eastern Europe, 7.9 million of which settled in West Germany, while 4 million settled in what would become the GDR by 1950 (Feld et al. 12). These numbers do not include the approximately 7 million Displaced Persons in Germany during those same years, many of them Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust who were leaving German DP camps for Israel, the United States, and other countries — though a significant number also stayed, not always by choice� 4 Given the scarcity of livable space and basic resources in the destroyed country as well as the ideological legacy of the Nazi period, these large population movements resulted in significant conflict. “Die fremden Deutschen aus dem Osten wurden in den vier Besatzungszonen, [sic] vielfach als ‘Polacken’, als ‘Zigeuner’, als ‘Rucksackdeutsche’ diffamiert. Willkommen waren sie nicht, vielmehr bestimmte Fremdheit ihren Alltag” (Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ” n. pag.). Complaints about the Zwangseinquartierung of the 11.9 million “ethnic Germans” into existing German households focused on the obvious struggles of sharing scarce resources, such as food, supplies, and livable space, but also harped on what seem like minor differences today, such as not speaking the same German dialect and belonging to different Christian denominations (Feld et al. 12; Hoefer; Kossert, “Böhmen, Pommern, Syrien”). “Mitnichten kamen jedoch Deutsche zu Deutschen, denn zu unterschiedlich waren kulturelle und mentale Prägungen. Bauern aus Galizien trafen auf urbane Württemberger, Prager Großbürger auf Oberfranken auf dem 186 Joela Jacobs Land. Dialekte, Mentalitäten, Konfessionen und Sozialisationen — die Unterschiede konnten kaum größer sein” (Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ” n. pag.). Yet in hindsight, this “refugee crisis” is considered a success story today, in part due to the economic upswing of rebuilding Germany and the so-called Wirtschaftswunder years, in which these new arrivals actively participated (Feld et al.; Hoefer; Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ”). Nonetheless, former German refugees in Germany recall a host of negative experiences both during their Flucht and after their arrival — a theme that also appears in the canon of German Nachkriegsliteratur, such as in the works of Günther Grass and Christa Wolf (Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ”). Seeing the current “refugee crisis” has reminded some of these former refugees 5 of their suffering during their journeys west and the difficulties of being accepted there, and consequently they have spoken about what they have in common with the most recent refugees in the media. The video “Flucht 1945 und heute: 2 Generationen. 1 Schicksal.” (Deutschland3000) 6 , for instance, brings together young Syrian refugees and elderly Germans under the rubric of shared experiences� As they are talking in pairs about the horrors of their journeys, it not only becomes clear that war and flight have an unchangingly violent face, but their stories also reactivate certain tropes of Flucht that connect the post- World War II legacy with the Middle East. The participants have been traumatized by rape and violence, by losing their homes (Heimat) and possessions, and by fearing for their lives on a boat in the Mediterranean and in a handcart near the Eastern front. They also all experienced hostility upon their arrival. Thus inscribing Syrian refugees into a part of German history that has been on the margins of the spotlight of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ”), videos and articles like these create an emotional connection through a set of tropes that positions both Syrians and Germans as victims. The notion of German victimhood becomes possible because the generation retelling their World War II horrors was one of children and young adults during the Nazi period, and so are the Syrian refugees featured. This keeps questions of large-scale culpability out of this very personal and emotional discourse, and the fluent German spoken by the refugees seems to signal that they are successful arrivals. Just as the first “refugee crisis” became a success story, so can the third one, the video implicitly suggests, and accordingly, it ends with an elderly German telling a young Syrian: “Berlin braucht dich�” In the media, these (family hi)stories of Flucht have been cited as one motivation for volunteers to help refugees today (Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ”), while other articles have also drawn a line from the support for refugees in 2015 to the shock over the violent reactions to the “refugee crisis” of the early 1990s (Diestelmann; Schreiber; Vitzthum). While the numbers of asylum seekers Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 187 in Germany had been quite low before the 1980s and the migration discourse was primarily focused on so-called Gastarbeiter*innen and Aussiedler*innen, the political changes in Eastern Europe, the war in former Yugoslavia, and increasing conflicts between Turks and Kurds in the late 80s and early 90s resulted in 1.5 million individual applications for asylum in Germany between 1990 and 1994, which included the subsequent addition of 2.1 million family members (Feld et al. 18). In addition, ca. 2.5 million (Spät-)Aussiedler*innen moved from Eastern Europe to Germany between 1988 and 1998 as the Iron Curtain fell (Feld et al. 14). What made these population movements a “crisis” in the public eye were not only the numbers, but also the German reaction, which was intensified by anxieties surrounding the fall of the Wall and the German Reunification during that same time period: The years between 1991 and 1993 saw a series of violent acts, primarily involving individual beatings and arson attacks on refugee and asylum seeker housing. These events were named after the locations of the incidents in East and West Germany, such as Hoyerswerda, Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Mölln, and Solingen. There were two kinds of attacks, which resulted in many injuries and several deaths: Those that involved mob violence, which tended to take place in former East German states and were televised, and those planned in secret by small groups of neo-Nazis in West German cities (Lüdemann and Ohlemacher 90). The public debate about this “crisis” was structured around these differences between East and West, especially since the majority of the early incidents had happened in the former East Germany, and according to the Verfassungsschutzbericht 1990, these Bundesländer were struggling with statistically higher numbers of skinheads (Lausberg 39). In particular the events in Rostock-Lichtenhagen were often referred to as a “pogrom” (Prenzel), inscribing them into an Eastern European lineage of state-sanctioned anti-Semitic violence before World War II but also events such as the euphemistically named “Reichskristallnacht,” and thus drawing on terminology whose multiple equations suggest that “Germans have not learned” from the Holocaust (neither that violence against Others is wrong, nor that the instrumentalization of the history of Jewish suffering erases it). Since this language of the “pogrom” was primarily applied to the mob violence of the East German events, it implied that East Germany’s lack of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (and not Vergangenheitsbewältigung itself or German society writ large) was to blame for these acts. This attribution conveniently shifted the responsibility to “less enlightened Germans” and reinforced the cultural trenches between “Ossis” and “Wessis” by aligning East Germans with the Russian history of violence against Jews and invoking the GDR’s anti-Semitism (Haury). Rather than engaging with the reunited country’s apparent racism in both East and West — poignantly described by May Ayim in “Das Jahr 188 Joela Jacobs 1990: Heimat und Einheit aus afro-deutscher Perspektive” 7 —this appropriation of the Jewish past and the use of Vergangenheitsbewältigung implicitly allowed the trauma of the German separation and the conflicts of the Reunification to take center stage in these debates, thus focusing on the perpetrators rather than their victims� The deaths of those murdered in these violent attacks of the early 1990s were commemorated during the most recent “refugee crisis” of the 2010s, which brought those parallels into the media spotlight (“25 Jahre Brandanschlag in Solingen”; Diestelmann; Prenzel; Schreiber; Vitzthum). 2016 saw twice as many applications for asylum as 1992, the year with the highest numbers in the 90s (Feld et al. 18), and right-wing sentiment rose again across many different demographic portions of the population, as the election success of the AfD in 2017 demonstrated� 8 Those sharing the anti-refugee sentiment of the AfD have also been arguing for a Schlussstrich under the German Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Maas; Meyer). This terminology of the Schlussstrich originated with discontent over denazification after 1945 and was picked up again in 1998, when Martin Walser warned of the instrumentalization of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in his controversial Friedenspreis speech in the Frankfurter Paulskirche. In his speech, he referred to the burning asylum seeker housing of the early 1990s and introduced the famous notion of the Moralkeule Auschwitz, saying: “Auschwitz eignet sich nicht dafür, Drohroutine zu werden, jederzeit einsetzbares Einschüchterungsmittel oder Moralkeule” (Walser 303). Walser’s description of the use of Holocaust references as a moral cudgel to end all conversation triggered a public debate accusing Walser of anti-Semitism that further ingrained these terms into German public discourse (and though he never spoke of a Schlussstrich, his speech was often referred to as such). 9 AfD politicians such as Björn Höcke and Alexander Gauland have drawn on this language in 2017 and embedded it in overtly nationalist statements when calling for a Schlussstrich under what rightwing representatives characterize as the German “Schuldkult” (Maas; Meyer). Their rhetoric implies that current German politics regarding refugees are a result of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a claim that entangles racist xenophobia with Islamophobia and anti-Semitism� Yet the third “refugee crisis” in 2015 was not only met with negative reactions. The media registered an outpouring of support for refugees by citizen volunteers that has been subsumed under the term Willkommenskultur (a word with its own complicated implications), 10 and is characterized by Angela Merkel’s dictum “Wir schaffen das! ” (Dockery). In the media, both in Germany and abroad, this approach to embrace refugees and make them feel welcome in Germany has also been associated with German guilt about the Nazi past, and hence Vergangenheitsbewältigung, from both the left and the right of the politi- Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 189 cal spectrum. It has been called a “deutsches Moralmonopol” (Winkler; Sabrow), “Sondermoral,” and “Judenknacks”: “Konservative Kommentatoren von Washington über London bis Berlin sind sich einig: Die Hilfe der Deutschen für die Flüchtlinge ist eine schräge Form der Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (Augstein). German media have additionally connected Willkommenskultur to the violence of the early 90s, suggesting that those events have created a moral imperative to do better (Diestelmann; Schreiber; Vitzthum). These connections can imply the problematic notion that past violence can be made up for, pardoned, or conclusively “dealt with” (bewältigt) through these acts. The environmental education initiatives emerged in the context of this Willkommenskultur, which has successfully established relationships between people of different backgrounds and fostered community. Yet the environmental programs did not account for the complex cultural nature of Umweltschutz in Germany, so rather than being prepared for negotiating cultural differences, the programs assumed untrained German volunteers to be experts and refugees to be a sort of tabula rasa in a one-sided transfer of purportedly purely functional knowledge. Those programs that reflected on the struggles they subsequently encountered 11 show an emerging awareness of these cultural implications, yet they lack the realization that environmentalism as a Kulturgut has become a site for a displaced sense of national pride in Germany that tends to be taboo in many other contexts because of the discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung� German national pride is displaced onto the local (allowing for proud Berliners but not proud Germans) as well as perceived German achievements such as soccer and, so I argue here, environmentalism� In these contexts, Umweltschutz can turn into a Moralkeule of sorts, when it assumes moral implications about environmental protection as an absolute good (in contrast to the absolute evil of Auschwitz) that ends any conversation about, in this case, racist and exclusory side effects of its practices. The Future of Nature and Culture Suggesting that Umweltschutz can be used as a Moralkeule is a controversial statement, both in respect to the original context of this term, the Holocaust, and in regard to the valuable work that Germans have been doing both for refugees and the environment. Yet by contextualizing this most recent “refugee crisis” in the discourses surrounding previous “refugee crises,” Vergangenheitsbewältigung emerges as a thread that connects German responses to these events and shapes even environmental initiatives, which seem unrelated to the history of the Holocaust� Whether we like it or not, even positive achievements such as environmentalism are implicated in the violent history that shaped their 190 Joela Jacobs emergence: Just as the environmentalism of Western countries has a colonial legacy that becomes apparent in debates about the responsibility for emissions on the global stage and the shipping of waste from developed to developing nations, so is German environmentalism entangled in its cultural history of discourses about racial hygiene and selection� 12 The impact of historical events might be easier to accept with other examples: Chernobyl and Fukushima have shaped German energy policy just as much as the notion of der deutsche Wald has impacted activism against Waldsterben (Goodbody). Yet similarly, discourses about sorting like with like that evoke notions of purity and cleanliness are part of both environmentalist and social discourse� The two previous “refugee crises” also seem to teach us that the sense of crisis evaporates over time and refugees turn into an enrichment of society in hindsight (Feld et al.; Kossert, “Wann ist man angekommen? ”). Yet statistics suggest that refugees and asylum seekers themselves experience lasting disadvantages (Ziegler). Ending with a nostalgic, all-will-be-well view to the past would therefore be a hazardous simplification that shifts the focus away from the ongoing suffering, the lasting trauma, and those who do not fit into the mold of the successfully “integrated.” To return to the emotional video that shows what German and Syrian refugees share in common, it is important to listen to the voices of these young Syrians and other new arrivals in Germany. Yet, refugees need to be heard and taken seriously even when their German is not fluent, when they continue to feel alienated in German culture, and when they are struggling to fit into the dominant cultural narrative — which goes beyond the curated clip. That is to say, returning to Hage’s words, that we need to begin cultivating an archive of cultural discourses that does not “reinforce and reproduce the dominance of the basic social structures behind its generation” (14). One way to amend this approach is to stop the discourse of the “crisis,” realize the new status quo, and face it as our future� We need to imagine fundamentally changed ways of living together on a dying planet. This entails ecological and social justice in equal parts — one becomes dystopian without the other. In this process, those who know how to live with resource scarcity and social injustices firsthand have valuable expertise from which their privileged counterparts need to learn� Two Conclusions about the Archive Researching online media of various kinds presents scholars with a variety of considerations regarding the notion of the archive� On the one hand, digital resources seem to have opened up an endless treasure trove of new materials, which can seemingly be translated with a mouse click, and whose vastness seems unconquerable without quantitative tools. At the same time, a differ- Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 191 ent set of rules than that of the traditional archive applies to these materials� While most newspapers archive their articles meticulously, they often charge for access and thus introduce inaccessibility and economic difference into the seemingly egalitarian digital landscape� Other media change their content and URLs frequently, thus exposing the temporal and ephemeral nature of the digital archive. My qualitative approach to this vast sea of materials shines spotlights on cultural developments by close reading individual pieces, yet among others, my most central article (Hackl) can only be retrieved with the help of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (https: / / archive.org/ ) at this point, which poses problems for citation practices� Since this article was featured in a local newspaper, my published research about it is presumably the only place where excerpts from it have become archived publicly, and it is contextualized in a specific way that is shaped by my analysis and the context of German studies in the US. This raises many questions about research methodology that especially ethnographers and other qualitative researchers of culture have long been grappling with� Deliberations about researcher positionality, for instance, might provide useful approaches for scholarship about this new archive and the digital humanities writ large� This constantly changing digital archive is not only relevant for research but also the academic teaching of German culture through topics such as environmentalism and the “refugee crisis” across the United States� Usually, those two themes are not presented as connected, and each follows its own canon of established tropes and texts, which the digital archive is able to redefine. When presenting Umweltschutz and Willkommenskultur only as achievements in the German context, these courses are in danger of reproducing uncritical discourses� Yet close reading digital media together with students, including perhaps not only professionally produced sources as I did here, but also personal blogs, vlogs, and social media, can be an effective tool in exposing the ways in which these discourses operate and intersect both with one another and with historical debates� At the same time, a comparative view toward discourses about racism and immigration as well as environmentalism in the US and beyond might help sharpen the analytical toolkit of the students and surely adds additional dimensions� Ultimately, existing practices of expanding the canonical concept of the archive in German studies to include new media have shown themselves to be particularly valuable for both the research and teaching of contemporary cultural phenomena, especially in swiftly evolving areas that are impacted by world politics such as the environmental humanities and social justice discourses� 192 Joela Jacobs Notes 1 Gender is another relevant dimension of analysis for these programs and their depictions, for instance when they offer gardening and cooking initiatives for women or only feature men in a training program for “environmental experts.” For more information, see Jacobs. 2 See Langstaff for the conceptual history of this term. 3 See also similar suggestions based on other national and transnational, postcolonial contexts in Bullard; Teaiwa. 4 It is important not to conflate the various, very different populations of migrants in German history, such as so-called Vertriebene, Kriegsflüchtlinge, and Displaced Persons, Gastarbeiter*innen, Asylbewerber*innen, and various generations of Aussiedler*innen and Spätaussiedler*innen. Feld et al. provide a good overview of the distinctions; see also Stokes. 5 Contemporary German discourse accounts for the notion that the term Flüchtling suggests an ongoing, never-ending status of fleeing by calling the new arrivals Geflüchtete, those who have fled, instead. Additionally, the -ling ending is diminutive and has negative associations in many contexts, e�g�, Schädling, Eindringling, according to the glossary of Neue deutsche Medienmacher*innen. 6 “Deutschland3000 wird produziert von funk. funk ist ein Gemeinschaftsangebot der Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ARD) und des Zweiten Deutschen Fernsehens (ZDF)” (Deutschland3000, “About”). 7 See also Goertz; Plumly. 8 In the 2017 election, the AfD jumped from 4�7% in 2013 to 12�6%, making it the third-strongest party (“Bundestagswahl”). 9 See Jansen. 10 See Weber� 11 See exemplarily Rittershofer. 12 See the work of Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Marc Cioc, Peter Staudenmaier, Corinna Treitel, Frank Uekötter, Thomas Zeller, and others. The focus on the Nazi period in discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung has overshadowed the necessary engagement with other aspects of Germany’s history, such as colonialism, which is also absent from the media depictions of environmental education initiatives for refugees� Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 193 Works Cited “25 Jahre Brandanschlag in Solingen.” bpb.de. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 24 May 2018. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. “Alle Projekte von A-Z.” umweltbildung-mit-fluechtlingen.de. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Natur- und Umweltbildung Bayern, n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. “Auszeichnung für das Geflüchteten-Projekt.” umweltbildung-mit-fluechtlingen.de. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Natur- und Umweltbildung Bayern, n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Augstein, Jakob. “Weil Opa für Adolf gekämpft hat.” spiegel.de. Der Spiegel, 18 Jan. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Ayim, May. “Das Jahr 1990. Heimat und Einheit aus afro-deutscher Perspektive.” Entfernte Verbindungen: Rassismus, Antisemitismus, Klassenunterdrückung� Ed� Ika Hügel et al. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1993. 206—22. Bullard, Robert D. “The Threat of Environmental Racism.” Natural Resources & Environment 7.3 (1993): 23—26, 55—56. “Bundestagswahl 2017: Endgültiges Ergebnis�” bundeswahlleiter.de� Der Bundeswahlleiter/ Statistisches Bundesamt, 12 Oct. 2017. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt. “Ausschreibung im DBU-Programm Umwelt und Flüchtlinge.” Newsletter DBUaktuell III (2015): n. pag. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Deutschland3000� “About�” YouTube, n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. —. “Flucht 1945 und heute: 2 Generationen. 1 Schicksal.” YouTube, 30 Jan. 2018. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Diestelmann, Esther. “Als aus Vietnamesen Fidschis wurden.” zeit.de� Zeit Online, 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Dockery, Wesley. “Zwei Jahre ‘Wir schaffen das’.” dw.com. Deutsche Welle, 3 Sept� 2017. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Feld, Lars P., Annabelle Doerr, Patrick Hirsch, and Christoph Sajon. “Zuwanderung nach Deutschland von 1945 bis heute�” Fakten statt Stimmungslage: Malteser Migrationsbericht 2017 (2017): 8—27. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Goertz, Karein K. “Showing Her Colors: An Afro-German Writes the Blues in Black and White�” Callaloo 26.2 (2003): 306—19. Goodbody, Axel. “Anxieties, Visions and Realities: Environmentalism in Germany.” The Culture of German Environmentalism: Anxieties, Visions, Realities� Oxford: Berghahn, 2004. 33—46. Hackl, Herbert. “Recyclingkurse für Migranten: Mühsame Müllregeln.” br.de� Bayerischer Rundfunk, 30 May 2016. Web. 26 Feb. 2017. Hage, Ghassan. Is Racism an Environmental Threat? Cambridge: Polity, 2017. Haury, Thomas. “Antisemitismus in der DDR.” bpb.de. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 28 Nov. 2006. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Hoefer, Carsten. “‘Die Flüchtlinge müssen herausgeworfen werden’.” welt.de� Welt, 12 Oct. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. “Integrationsprojekte auf einen Klick�” bamf.de. Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, 13 Apr. 2018. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. 194 Joela Jacobs Jacobs, Joela. “It’s Not Easy Being Green: Integrating Refugees in German Environmentalist Culture�” Otago German Studies 28 (2017): 180—98. Jansen, Ludger. “Alles Schlußstrich - oder was? Eine philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit Martin Walsers Friedenspreisrede.” Theologie und Philosophie 80 (2005): 412—22. Ki-moon, Ban. “Forced Displacement: A Global Challenge.” un.org� United Nations, 15 Apr. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Kossert, Andreas. “Böhmen, Pommern, Syrien.” zeit.de. Zeit Online, 12 Feb. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. —. “Wann ist man angekommen? Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene im Nachkriegsdeutschland�” bpb.de. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 30 Nov. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Langstaff, Alex. “Crisisⁿ or, Rebooting Conceptual History for the Twenty-First Century�” jhiblog.org. Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, 17 July 2019. Web. 14 Mar. 2020. Lausberg, Michael. Die extreme Rechte in Ostdeutschland 1990-1998. Marburg: Tectum, 2012� Lüdemann, Christian, and Thomas Ohlemacher. Soziologie der Kriminalität: Theoretische und empirische Perspektiven. Weinheim: Juventa, 2002. Maas, Stefan. “So geht rechte Geschichtspolitik in Deutschland.” deutschlandfunkkultur. de. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 1 Feb. 2017. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Meisner, Matthias. “Zentralrat der Juden widerspricht Bundesregierung.” tagesspiegel. de. Der Tagesspiegel, 3 Mar. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Messerschmidt, Achim. “Flüchtlinge lernen Mülltrennung: Hilfe bei den Hürden des Alltags�” shz.de. Eckernförder Zeitung, 15 Oct. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Meyer, Robert D. “Der ‘Schlussstrich’ hilft dem Ressentiment.” neues-deutschland.de. Neues Deutschland, 15 June 2018. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Neue deutsche Medienmacher*innen. “Flüchtlinge.” NdM-Glossar. Neue Deutsche Medienmacher e. V., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2020. Plumly, Vanessa D. “Refugee Assemblages, Cycles of Violence, and Body Politic(s) in Times of ‘Celebratory Fear’.” Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture 32 (2016): 163—88. Prenzel, Thomas. “Vor 25 Jahren: Die rassistisch motivierten Ausschreitungen von Rostock-Lichtenhagen.” bpb.de. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 17 Aug. 2017. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Redaktion. “Panik bei den Grünen: Flüchtlinge machen Umweltschutz zunichte.” Kopp-online. Kopp Verlag, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 26 Feb. 2017. Rittershofer, Michael. “Chicken? Chicken! Kochen mit Flüchtlingen bei TAGWERK e. V. - Eine vorläufige Bilanz.” Umweltmagazin: Umwelt.Flucht.Unser Beitrag 73 (2016): 13—14. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Sabrow, Martin. “Es geht nicht um Moral.” zeit.de. Zeit Online, 26 May 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Schenk, Arnfried. “‘Hitler war ein guter Mann’, sagt die Mitschülerin.” zeit.de. Zeit Online, 18 Apr. 2018. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Umweltschutz als Moralkeule: The German Past, the Refugee Present, and the Planet’s Future 195 Schreiber, Wolfgang. “Rückkehr eines Traumas.” deutschlandfunk.de� Deutschlandfunk, 29 May 2018. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Stokes, Lauren. “The Permanent Refugee Crisis in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949—.” Central European History 52 (2019): 19—44. Web. 14 Mar. 2020. Teaiwa, Teresia� “How Climate Change is Like the Slave Trade�” e-tangata.co.nz� E-TANGATA, 28 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. “Umweltbildung und BNE mit Flüchtlingen.” umweltbildung-bayern.de. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Natur- und Umweltbildung Bayern, n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Vitzthum, Thomas. “Die Schande, die bleibt.” welt.de. Welt, 24 Aug. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2019� Walser, Martin. “Erfahrungen beim Verfassen einer Sonntagsrede.” Aus dem Wortschatz unserer Kämpfe: Prosa, Aufsätze, Gedichte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001. 295—310. Weber, Beverly. “Islamophobia East-West and the Politics of Hospitality in Contemporary Germany.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (2020): 44—56. Web. 14 Mar. 2020. Winkler, Heinrich August. “Es gibt kein deutsches Moralmonopol.” zeit.de� Zeit Online, 26 Apr. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019. Ziegler, Philip. “Was wurde aus den Flüchtlingen der Neunziger? ” zeit.de� Zeit Online, 1 Sept. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2019.