Max Planck, Berlin

Today, I presented at the Max Planck Society in Berlin, alongside soil scientists, landscape architects, artists, activists, anthropologists, and historians from all over the world. The talks took place at the Harnack House where Albert Einstein also presented in 1929, before he fled the country like many members of the German intelligentsia. Before the fascist period, Germany was the leading country in science, engineering, and culture, having earned more Noble prizes than the US, Britain, and France—combined (see Peter Watson’s book: The German Genius Europe’s Third Renaissance, The Second Scientific Revolution And The Twentieth Century from 2011). Germany never recovered from that dark chapter, even if, notoriously, some technological progress was made during that time under the most inhumane pressure, often in military-related fields including road-building, geotechnology, and aerospace engineering, which most often involved concentration camp labor. The Max Planck Society, founded in 1948, carries on the spirit of the Golden Age of German thought and science before fascism. Restoring some of this spirit of unity, our »Thinking from the Substrate« Workshop (Jun 3-5) at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science brought together thinkers and practitioners to think with, through, and about soil. In my talk, I meditated about the soil that carries the heavy load-bearing cylinder and what this means for the geological foundations of human history and the pressure we are applying to the planet. The results will be published in website form and as essays soon.