Infinite Power to Change the World
Hydroelectricity and Engineered Climate Change in the Atlantropa Project
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5735244 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Philipp Nicolas Lehmann, Philipp Lehmann (0000-0001-8344-6830, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 121 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 70-100 |
| Publication date | 2016-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/121.1.70 |
| OpenAlex | W2324332173 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
This article examines the Atlantropa Project of the German architect Herman So&x0308;rgel as a window onto the interconnected histories of environmental anxiety and technological optimism in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. In the late 1920s, So&x0308;rgel conceived of Atlantropa as an answer to Oswald Spengler’s warnings about Europe’s inevitable cultural decline. The main feature of the project was a gigantic dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, which would not only create a connected and climate-engineered Afro-European super-continent, but also provide a potentially inexhaustible source of hydropower. So&x0308;rgel was convinced that the availability of cheap and boundless energy would ring in a new, peaceful era, and form the basis for a coming unified and revitalized European society. Despite the unprecedented and utopian scale, the plans were more than the expression of an eccentric mind. So&x0308;rgel’s anxieties about environmental decline and resource exhaustion paired with his belief in the absolute primacy of technology reflected contemporary debates and struck a chord with the public. Atlantropa thus stands as a striking example of both the entanglement of environmental and political ideas in interwar Germany and the still understudied history of the unrealized utopian projects of high modernism.
Archaeology · Climate change · Economic history · Economy · Environmental ethics · German · Hydropower · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Ecology · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies · Engineering · History · Law
US to USSR
Pipe Dreams
Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities
Climate and colonialism
Climate, weather, and water in history
Imperialism, colonialism, and climate change science
The Maltese Fulcrum
Hydroponics and geopolitics
Planet Electric
La paix par les égouts », ou l’unité méditerranéenne comme utopie urbaine, géopolitique et environnementale (années 1950 – années 1990)
Measuring the Cost of Pollution
Unbuilt and Unfinished
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,2 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |