Vortrag von Žiga Zwitter (Ljubljana): Hay Meadows in the Alps, 16th–Mid-20th Centuries: A Material and Cultural Environmental History, and “Usable Pasts”

Zweite Veranstaltung des Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquiums für Umweltgeschichte (BBC) im Wintersemester 2025/26, das zu vier Terminen von Oktober 2025 bis Februar 2026 einlädt. Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt. 

Veranstalter: Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam 

Montag, 15. Dezember 2025 | 18-20 Uhr 

Abstract 
The forthcoming 980-page volume Historical Biodiversity in the Alps: Grassland Agroecosystems in the Last Millennium (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, autumn 2025), written in cooperation with botanist Leonid Rasran, will be presented by the first author. The book combines novel research insights—based on archival and published primary sources, oral-history interviews, historical artefacts and paintings, fieldwork, and interdisciplinary botanical and agronomic interpretations—and literature to synthesize a material and cultural environmental history of hay meadows in the Alps. The volume contains the following chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) Brief phytosociological overview, (3) Fluctuations in grassland area in the Alps over the last millennium, (4) Natural and nature-induced environmental changes in grasslands, (5) Historical changes in livestock size and feed demand, (6) Selected historical practices of species-rich grassland management and their ecological impacts, (7) Introduction of plant species to grasslands in the Alps through human activities in the context of economic history, political history, and the history of botany and ornamental plants, (8) Gathering of grassland plants and lichens, (9) Abandonment of grasslands in the Alps: a case study with an emphasis on the role of plant species composition, (10) Applicability of grassland history in the twenty-first century, with an emphasis on meadows, and (11) Conclusions. A selection of historical contents will be presented, enabling the presentation of a few examples of “usable pasts” in the 21st century, when species-rich grasslands are being rapidly lost. 

Short Bio 
Žiga Zwitter, PhD, University of Ljubljana, graduated in history and geography, and obtained his PhD in history in 2015. He is an assistant professor of early modern history. Since his postdoctoral project at the Vienna’s Institute of Social Ecology (2016–2017), his research has focused on long-term environmental history and historical ecology of grasslands in the Alps. Together with botanist Leonid Rasran, they wrote the interdisciplinary volume Historical Biodiversity in the Alps: Grassland Agroecosystems in the Last Millennium (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, autumn 2025). Zwitter has been representative of the European Society for Environmental History’s Dinaric Region and he is recently elected president of the Historical Association of Slovenia. He was visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck (2024) and at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (2025).