This report takes a new English-language translation of Friedrich Ratzel’s infamous essay Der Lebensraum (1901) as a prompt to consider the ethical questions that are raised by revisiting geography’s dangerous ideas and discredited practitioners. Attending to a series of recent interventions that offer new readings of Ratzel and his essay, I consider how historiographical practice and moral obligation intersect in the process of making sense of, and coming to terms with, disciplinary pasts that haunt the present. The report concludes by considering the future of the series of which it forms part and argues that the task of narrating progress in the history and philosophy of geography should be assumed by a more diverse range of authors than has heretofore been the case.
BarnesTJ (2017) A marginal man and his central contributions: The creative spaces of William (‘Wild Bill’) Bunge and American geography. Environment and Planning A. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17707524,
4.
BassinM (1987) Imperialism and the nation state in Friedrich Ratzel’s political geography. Progress in Human Geography11(4): 473–95.
5.
BhambryT (2018) Translator’s introduction. Journal of Historical Geography61: 59–60.
6.
BaruaM (2018) Ratzel’s biogeography: A more-than-human encounter. Journal of Historical Geography61: 102–08.
7.
Chiantera-StutteP (2018) Ratzel’s stone guest: The art of politics in the work of Friedrich Ratzel. Journal of Historical Geography61: 91–96.
CotoiC (2018) The geopolitical turn in interwar Romanian sociology and geography: From social reform to population exchange plans. History of the Human Sciences. DOI: 10.1177/0952695118771248.
10.
CraggsRNeateH (2018) Post-colonial careering and the discipline of geography: British geographers in Nigeria and the UK, 1945–1990. Journal of Historical Geography. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2018.05.014.
11.
DanielssonSK (2009) Creating genocidal space: Geographers and the discourse of annihilation, 1880–1933. Space and Polity13(1): 55–68.
12.
DowJRLixfieldH (eds) (1994) The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
13.
DownsRM (2017) Grapling with geography’s existential dilemma: The legacy of William Torrey Harris. Geographical Review107(4): 660–79.
14.
FazioliKP (2012) From First Reich to Third Reich: German imperialism and early medieval scholarship in the southeastern Alpine region (c. 1919–1945). Archaeologies8(2): 116–44.
15.
FerrettiF (2018) Geographies of internationalism: Radical development and critical geopolitics from the northeast of Brazil. Political Geography63: 10–19.
16.
FerrettiF (2019) Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK. Abingdon: Routledge.
17.
FerrettiFPedrosaBV (2018) Inventing critical development: A Brazilian geographer and his northern networks. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers43(4): 703–17.
18.
GiaccariaPMincaC (2016) Life in space, space in life: Nazi topographies, geographical imaginations, and Lebensraum. Holocaust Studies22(2–3): 151–171.
19.
GinsburgerN (2017) Femmes en géographie au temps des changements: féminisation et féminisme dans le champ disciplinaire français et international (1960–1990). L’Espace géographique46(3): 236–63.
20.
GliboffS (2008) H. G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism: A Study in Translation and Transformation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
21.
HalasM (2014) Searching for the perfect footnote: Friedrich Ratzel and the others at the roots of Lebensraum. Geopolitics19(1): 1–18.
22.
JönsHMonkJKeighrenIM (2017) Introduction: Towards more inclusive and comparative perspectives in the histories of geographical knowledge. The Professional Geographer69(4): 655–60.
23.
JureitU (2018) Mastering space: Laws of movement and the grip on the soil. Journal of Historical Geography61: 81–85.
24.
KeighrenIM (2017) ‘A Royal Geographical Society for ladies’: The Lyceum Club and women’s geographical frontiers in Edwardian London. The Professional Geographer69(4): 661–69.
25.
KeighrenIM (2018) History and philosophy of geography II: The excluded, the evil, and the anarchic. Progress in Human Geography42(5): 770–78.
26.
KlinkeI (2018) Friedrich Ratzel, Lebensraum and the death motif. Journal of Historical Geography61: 97–101.
27.
KlinkeIBassinM (2018) Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents. Journal of Historical Geography61: 53–58.
28.
LangeK (1965) Der terminus ‘Lebensraum’ in Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte13: 426–37.
29.
LoisC (2018) The history of geography: Narratives to discipline the past and reinvent geography as a modern discipline. Isis109(1): 112–15.
30.
MelgaçoL (2017) Thinking outside the bubble of the Global North: Introducing Milton Santos and ‘The Active Role of Geography’. Antipode49(4): 946–51.
31.
MelgaçoLProuseC (eds) (2017) Milton Santos: A Pioneer in Critical Geography from the Global South. Cham: Springer.
32.
MichelB (2018) Anti-semitism in early 20th century German geography: From a ‘spaceless’ people to the root of the ‘ills’ of urbanization. Political Geography65: 1–7.
33.
MonkJ (2017) Washington women: Practicing geography in the U.S. Government, 1915–1970s. The Professional Geographer69(4): 683–93.
34.
MurphyDT (2018) ‘Retroactive effects’: Ratzel’s spatial dynamics and the expansionist imperative in interwar Germany. Journal of Historical Geography61: 86–90.
35.
PetropoulosJ (2000) The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
36.
PortuondoMM (2018) Between two poles: Positivism and historicism in the history of contemporary geography. Isis109(1): 109–12.
37.
RadcliffeSA (2017) Decolonising geographical knowledges. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers42(3): 329–33.
38.
RajanSR (2017) Genealogies of Environmentalism: The Lost Works of Clarence Glacken. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
39.
RajanSR (2018) Clarence Glacken: pioneer environmental historian. Environment and History. DOI: 10.3197/096734018X15217309861577.
40.
RatzelF (1882) Anthropo-Geographie oder Grundzüge der Anwendung der Erdkunde auf die Geschichte. Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn.
41.
RatzelF (1891) Anthropogeographie. Zweiter Teil: Die geographische Verbreitung des Menschen. Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn.
42.
RatzelF (1897) Politische Geographie. Munich and Leipzig: R. Oldenbourg.
43.
RatzelF (1901) Der Lebensraum. Eine biogeoraphische studie. In: BücherKFrickerKVFunkFXvon MandryGvon MayrGRatzelF (eds) Festgaben für Albert Schäffle zur siebenzigsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages. Tübingen, H. Laupp, pp. 102–89.
44.
RatzelF (2018) Lebensraum: A biogeographical study. Journal of Historical Geography61: 60–80.
45.
RichardsRJ (2008) The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
46.
RupkeN (2012) Alexander von Humboldt and monism. In: WeirTH (ed.) Monism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 71–90.
47.
SchafftGE (2004) From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
48.
SegalSL (2003) Mathematicians Under the Nazis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
49.
TammiksaarEJauhiainenJSPaeTAhasR (2018) Edgar Kant, Estonian geography and the reception of Walter Christaller’s central place theory, 1933–1960. Journal of Historical Geography60: 77–88.
50.
Van WykeB (2013) Translation and ethics. In: MillanCBartinaF (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 548–60.
51.
WeirTH (2014) Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
