Landschaftsgeschichte – Landschaftstheorie – Landschaftswandel: Konzeptionen und Fallstudien
In various disciplines including landscape research, the term landscape is controversial and is also newly conceptualized and theorized. Over the course of the 20th century, approaches ranged from the classical modernist concept of landscape to the postmodern and more particularized landscape approach. The new, particularized concept of landscape rejects both the ontologically frame of cultural landscape and the classical notion of self-contained homogeneous spaces. This article examines current perspectives in landscape research by focusing upon the example of the coastal landscape of the Baltic Sea and North Sea, which deals with the Graswarder Peninsula (near Heiligenhafen, Germany) and the changing of sea dykes. Coastal landscape is here understood not as a description of idealized nature, but as an analysis of the sometimes very rapid changes due to economic and socio-cultural settings.