Open Access

Christian Lotz

• Taking the International Congress on Agriculture and Forestry in Vienna 1890 as an example, the article examines controversies about the future prospects of timber supplies. Two participants at the congress, Adolf von Guttenberg and Eugen Ostwald, demanded an end to sustainable forest management. In their opinion, the railway, as a new transport technology, would enable a balance between regions of timber shortage and regions of abundance. Guttenberg’s and Ostwald’s pre- sentations provokedTaking the International Congress on Agriculture and Forestry in Vienna 1890 as an example, the article examines controversies about the future prospects of timber supplies. Two participants at the congress, Adolf von Guttenberg and Eugen Ostwald, demanded an end to sustainable forest management. In their opinion, the railway, as a new transport technology, would enable a balance between regions of timber shortage and regions of abundance. Guttenberg’s and Ostwald’s pre- sentations provoked heavy criticism and led, in the following years, to a fundamental debate about appropriate concepts of forest management. In the debate, three aspects were controversial: (1) the effects of railway transportation; (2) the consequences of the increasing timber consumption; (3) the effects of the timber frontier that was advancing, in particular, in Northern and Eastern European woodlands. As a result, the debate led to an ongoing process of rescaling sustainability. Since the 18th century, (classical) concepts of sustainability had been based on local schemes of calculation. By contrast, since the mid-19th century, the growing railway network overcame topo- graphical barriers that had been a pre-condition for local-scale sustainable forest management; in addition, the advancing timber frontier continuously opened up newly accessible woodland areas. Experts were forced to continuously gather new data and to steadily rescale their planning. In schemes for future resource management, space was no longer a constant, but a rapidly changing variable.…