The Permanent Forest

In 1922 the forest scientist Alfred Möller of Eberswalde published Der Dauerwaldgedanke, the idea of the permanent forest. Its core is the Stetigkeit des Waldwesens, the continuity of the forest as a living whole, above all by giving up clear-cutting. Möller’s example was the Bärenthoren estate, where Friedrich von Kalitsch had managed a pine forest this way since 1884. Von Kalitsch said: Ich mache niemals Kahlschläge und durchforste meinen ganzen Wald persönlich auszeichnend. I never clear-cut, and I personally mark the trees for thinning in my whole forest. Möller called clear-cut forestry Holzackerbau, timber farming. Under the German Empire, the usual practice was to plant single-species stands of spruce and pine and to harvest them after a few decades. A presentation on the website of the Brandenburg forest administration puts the idea in one line: Stetigkeit ist das Gegenteil von Plötzlichkeit. Continuity is the opposite of suddenness.

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