by Matthew Childs

Abstract

The natural catastrophe (Naturkatastrophe) was a concept that came into usage in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The term is used to describe natural events whose scale and effect are so profound as to contest the very viability of human social, political, and economic structures. Although its roots can be traced in the Western tradition back to Ancient Greece (καταστρέφω), the inclusion of Natur- signals a distinctly German contribution, one which signals the term’s transformation from a matter of poetological and dramatic consideration into one for ‘real-life’ situations. It became, too, a distinctly negative event. This appears most critically, albeit not exclusively, in works following the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Works by Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlob Krüger, Tobias Mayer, Johann Friedrich Jacobi, among other figures formed a conflicted foundation for understanding catastrophes of nature (Briese and Günther 2009, 173–74). Present-day perceptions of corresponding natural phenomena, especially those related to human-caused climate change, are still influenced by this eighteenth- and nineteenth-century formulation of the Naturkatastrophe concept, thus making it a subject vital for discussion at the intersection of the Environmental Humanities and German Studies.

A Brief History of Catastrophe

A full review of catastrophe’s history is not possible here (Briese and Günther 2009, 155–95), however some remarks as to its origins are necessary to understand its development and application in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The etymological roots of catastrophe are highly varied. Although one can point to particular terms (e.g., καταστρέφω), the fact is that its employment as noun and verb led to a great deal of semantic variation. Aeschylus’s The Suppliants offers the earliest example, where it is used to describe a difficult yet inevitable circumstance that will affect the fortunes of a city-state. The concept would find similar use in the works of Aristophanes (The Knights; The Wasps) and Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus), and Herodotus would see to its application in the subject of history. Interestingly, though Plato and Aristotle are often cited as playing a significant role in the development of catastrophe (especially when it comes to the latter’s Poetics), the term itself never arises in their prose. Nonetheless, both are influential for the evolution of related concepts.     

Evanthius, Aelius Donatus, Lucian, Posidonius, and Joseph Justus Scaliger among others contributed to the concept’s changes over the course of centuries, from Antiquity to the Renaissance and the Early Modern periods and right up to the eighteenth century. During that time, catastrophes would persist as a poetological interest, although the Hellenistic era featured many variations (Briese and Günther 2009, 161). Catastrophes also remained ambivalent or even positive events, with the latter characteristic forming in Latin literature and philosophy as well as in Christian theology, particularly in eschatological matters. Both of these attributes—that catastrophes were an affair for poetological matters and an ambivalent or even positive event—would undergo a transformation beginning in the eighteenth century.

Naturkatastrophe: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Innovations 

Right away one should note that the term Naturkatastrophe was not used in that particular form until the nineteenth century (Groh et al. 2003, 11–33). Prior to that, variations like Katastrophe der Natur or simply Katastrophe were more common when referring to natural disasters.[1] A ready example of this can be found in an essay written by Immanuel Kant following the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 (Kant 1994, 134). Strikingly, Kant does not employ the term “Katastrophe” when describing the physical characteristics of the earthquake, opting for terms like “Begebenheit” (event, or happening) or even “Naturbegebenheit” (natural event). He only uses the term Katastrophe when referring to the reactions of people to the situation affecting their fellow human beings.[2] Catastrophe, then, still bears some semblance of its poetological past, as it remains a term, at least in Kant, used to refer to the human reaction to the physical event that precipitates death and destruction. There is still an observable preoccupation with the human perception of the phenomenon. Nonetheless, its application here is remarkable when considered in light of previous centuries for the fact that it is being used to refer to an event that did not take place in a play, poem, or prose work. Kant’s essay is a work of the natural sciences, especially geology. 

The precipitating factor for this change is almost certainly the Lisbon Earthquake, which itself intersected with the growth of the field of geology. As Briese and Günther note, figures like the Swiss philosopher Johann Georg Zimmermann and thinker Albrecht von Haller also used catastrophe when describing the events of November 1, 1755; likewise, the German natural scientist Johann Esaias Silberschlag and natural historian Johann Friedrich Blumenbach—although the latter was still a child when the event took place (Briese and Günther 2009, 173–74). On the other hand, scholars like Christoph Weber trace this shift to the broader “Umwälzungen” (disruptions) that characterize the natural history of the eighteenth century (Weber 2009, 4). These events (e.g., the Lisbon Earthquake, Mt. Etna’s eruption in 1787, the European Winter of 1788–89) contested the Enlightenment’s optimism and promise of progress whereby societies could expect to gain ever greater control over the world in which they lived. Following this argument, Lisbon is but one of a number of factors that led to a fascination with natural catastrophe, and which brought attention to the paradigms that were “already shifting” beneath Europeans’ feet (Rigby 2015, 26). Nonetheless, the reaction by European thinkers, signaled by the rush of publications following the event, would certainly justify marking the event as the first among peers. In any case, what is indisputable is the fact that in period following Lisbon, the use of the term Katastrophe, or variations thereof, to describe and reflect on natural disasters proliferated, marking a fundamental change in its application and understanding as they related to real-life. 

As stated in the previous section, there are two innovations that intersect with the development of Katastrophe in the eighteenth and nineteenth century: (1) its expansion into real-life situations and (2) its transformation into a distinctly negative event. The above examples furnish evidence for catastrophe’s inclusion in natural scientific, especially geological, discourse. As a result, catastrophe started to be associated with nature and natural events, something which would eventually lead to the addition of Natur to the base term (hence, Naturkatastrophe). It remains to be shown, then, exactly why catastrophe so rapidly became a negative event. 

Briese and Günther point out that this question—why catastrophe became a wholly negative event—is difficult to answer (Briese and Günther 2009, 167). As the events recounted above might indicate, some of this change may very well come from the destructive effects of the disasters themselves. The news of tens of thousands of deaths in Portugal’s capitol in 1755 and the deleterious effects of the European Winter of 1788–89, which exacerbated food shortages brought about by poor harvests in prior years, affected material life in Europe in the eighteenth century. Such material physically and metaphorically influenced the understanding and, thus, the usage of catastrophe. This is tacitly acknowledged in late-eighteenth-century Enlightenment discourse, which frequently employed catastrophe as the bane against which human forces had to act in their pursuit of progress, as seen in the philosophical works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Wilhelm von Humboldt—a tendency that would be renewed by Karl Marx in his description of capitalism’s deleterious effects on human beings and his prediction of its eventual downfall (Briese and Günther 2009, 170–71). In the end, it is perhaps more efficacious and accurate to state that any number of physical and non-physical factors likely led to catastrophe’s transformation into an especially negative event, whether in reference to real-life, fictitious, or speculative circumstances. 

Conclusion: Twentieth-Century Adaptations of the Naturkatastrophe

By the turn of the twentieth century, the concept of natural catastrophe was utilized more and more for describing social and political circumstances. It continued to be understood as a distinctly negative event, the awareness of which justified extraordinary powers and actions in the socio-political realm. However, its entry into this space brought about notable modifications to its understanding and application. Particularly influential was World War I. The brutality of war, amplified by new and sophisticated means of bringing about an opponent’s end (e.g., poisonous gas, armored vehicles, early permutations of aerial warfare), contributed to the association of distinctly human-caused forms of mass death with an unleashing of natural forces. This conflation of the artificial with the natural would continue through World War II, offering an enticing means of self-absolution in the aftermath of Nazi atrocities.[3] In the writings of left-wing figures like Walter Benjamin, the line between natural and artificial catastrophes would likewise become a point of fascination. 

Benjamin’s innovative thinking about catastrophe, first begun in his essay Central Park (1938/39), would reach its zenith shortly before his suicide in his posthumously published Theses on the Philosophy of History (1942). In Thesis IX, where he contemplates Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920), Benjamin would make the forces of history themselves into a catastrophe, at which moment catastrophe also shifted from a locus external to the cultural realm to the center of human affairs. Anticipating Max Frisch’s observation that only human beings know catastrophe (Frisch 2007, 79)[4], Benjamin effectively recenters what had been an event defined by its effects on human society into one generated from the very center of its activity: natural catastrophe becomes catastrophe becomes the very meaning of progress. Far from an exceptional occurrence, the catastrophe is now constitutive of bourgeois capitalist society, a notion that would find play in other writers of the Frankfurt School, such as Theodor Adorno.[5]

In the time since World War II, the natural catastrophe has found purchase in the boardrooms of insurance companies and in risk management seminars. In this respect, natural catastrophe has become synonymous with risk assessment[6], a tendency which continues in contemporary policy debates surrounding the response to climate change. The emergence of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities over the last fifty years offers an opportunity to (re)asses the definition and relationship of natural catastrophe once more, taking into consideration its (often fraught) history. Whether or not one agrees with Frisch and others’ claims about the actual nature of the Naturkatastrophe, present circumstances dictate the need for engagement with this critical term. 

Reference Works

• Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications.
• Briese, Olaf, and Timo Günther. 2009. “Katastrophe: Terminologische Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft.” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 51: 155–95.
• Catlin, Jonathon. 2022. “Zygmunt Bauman, the Frankfurt School, and the Tradition of Enlightened Catastrophism.” In Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust, edited by Jack Palmer and Dariusz Brzezi´nski, Routledge..
• Frisch, Max. 2007. Man in the Holocene. Dalkey Archive Press.
• Groh, Dieter, et al, eds. 2003. Naturkatastrophen: Beiträge zu ihrer Deutung, Wahrnehmung und Darstellung in Text und Bild von der Antike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Gunter Narr Verlag.
• Huet, Marie-Hélène. 2012. The Culture of Disaster. University of Chicago Press.
• Jünger, Ernst. 2020. A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941–1945. Columbia University Press.
• Kant, Immanuel. 1994. “Geschichte und Naturbeschreibung der merkwürdigen Vorfälle des Erdbebens, welches an dem Ende des 1755sten Jahre einen großen Teil der Erde erschüttert hat.” In Die Erschütterung der vollkommenen Welt: Die Wirkung des Erdbeben von Lissabon m Spiegel europäischer Zeitgenossen, edited by Wolfgang Breidert. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt.
• Nascimento, Amos. 2017. “Immanuel Kant, the Anthropocene, and the Idea of Environmental Cosmopolitanism.” In Readings in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Humanities, German Studies, and Beyond, edited by Sabine Wilke. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.
• Remes, Jacob A.C., and Andy Horowitz, eds. 2021. Critical Disaster Studies. University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Rigby, Kate. 2015. Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times. University of Virginia Press.
• Vandeputte, Tom. 2023. “Continuity as Catastrophe: Origins of a Thesis in Walter Benjamin.” New German Critique 50 (1): 59–82.
• Weber, Christoph. 2009. Vom Gottesgericht zur verhängnisvollen Natur: Naturkatastrophen im 18. Jahrhundert. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (3384429).