Read in 2025 - 15: Das grüne Reich

Das grüne Reich

Michael Waldegg

My sister and I were fortunate, growing up surrounded by loving parents, grandparents and rows and rows of shelves filled with books. Reading was always important, and as soon as we learned how to read (I learned it from my sister, who is a year older than me and therefore started school ahead of me), we practically devoured books. There wasn't a birthday or Christmas without books as gifts.

With some of them, I am not sure how we ended up having them. Certainly we did get discarded library books every now and then, as my Mum worked at our school's library from when I was 9 years old. This one could have been one of them.

"Das grüne Reich" literally means "The green realm", referring to the forest or woodland - not a particular one, but all forests/woods on this planet. The subtitle says "Ein Jugendbuch vom Wald und seinem Leben" - a book for young people about the forest and its life.

Printed in 1952, some expressions and the illustrations are a little outdated, but the message is perfectly up to date: Our forests are important, precious and need protecting! Where they are harvested for wood, it must be done carefully and with replanting of new trees. Where they are cut down to make room for fields, pastures, roads, houses and factories, that has to be done in a carefully measured way, with reforestation measures in place elsewhere.

Sounds familiar? Yes... and although people have known this for a long time, deforestation is going on and on and on, contributing significantly to climate change and the dangerous effects of extreme weather.

Back to the book:

It is neatly divided in chapters explaining about the trees and other plants that make up a forest, but also the animals - big, small and VERY small - that live there. An entire chapter is dedicated to fungi, this strange species that is neither "true" plant nor "proper" animal.

The book is generously illustrated, and there is even a fold-out in full colour showing typical middle-European woodland plants and animals.

I don't know whether this was a school book in the 1950s and 60s; it certainly would have made for good, well structured lessons. But it is equally good to just read it at home. For me, it was a nostalgic reminder of the things my Dad taught me about the woods - his favourite kind of place, where he felt very much at home.

During my childhood, I have read it several times, but at some stage it got lost or was given away or sold, probably in connection with moving house. Recently, I found myself thinking of it, and re-acquired it through an internet platform for used books.

There was precious little I could find out about the author apart from that he was Austrian and wrote several more books, not all of them aimed at children.