Doing the Work

In central Germany, particularly in Hesse and Saxony, a few foresters had applied the same enthusiasm to managing the forest as to directing the hunt. These conscientious holzgerechte Jäger of the mid-century set annual cuttings according to easy rules based on areal divisions of the forest. After demarcating and measuring the acreage covered by the woods under their supervision, foresters estimated the number of years that the dominant types of trees should be allowed to grow between clearings or cuttings. They then partitioned the forest into a number of divisions equal to the number of years in this growth cycle, from which they proposed to derive equal annual yields, assuming that equal areas yield equal amounts of wood for harvest each year. This straightforward method worked reasonably

[25] Rubner, Forstgeschichte im Zeitalter der industriellen Revolution , 44–9.

[26] N.D.G. James, A history of English forestry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 167–72, 194: until 1900, "English forestry had chiefly consisted of allowing trees to grow and then felling them, and forest management, as it is known today, was nonexistent." Cf. John Croumbie Brown, Schools of forestry in Germany, with addenda relative to a desiderated British National School of Forestry (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1887). On the conflict between economic forestry and the English romantic affection for trees, see Keith Thomas, Man and the natural world: A history of the modern sensibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 212–23.

[27] On Switzerland, see Heinrich Grossmann, Der Einfluss der ökonomischen Gesellschaften auf die Entstehung einer eigentlichen Forstwirtschaft in der Schweiz (Bern: Bücher, 1932), 14–9; on Austria, see Rubner, Forstgeschichte im Zeitalter der industriellen Revolution , 71–5.

well for relatively short growth periods typical of coppice farming and the periodic clearing of underwood. It permitted limited variations, such as shelterwood (Schirmschlag ) or relative cutting (Proportionalschlag ), in which the harvest from a given section of the forest or the size of individual sections could be adjusted according to soil quality and other contingencies.

These methods may have sufficed for a minimally trained huntsman, but not for the fiscal or forest official imbued with Wissenschaft . The crude assumptions underlying the traditional areal division of the forest proved wholly unsatisfactory for the cash crop of forestry—the long-lived high timber, or Hochwald ; the older the trees, the greater the variation in the timber produced by each of the divisions of the forest. Furthermore, the irregular topography and uneven distribution of German woodlands confounded ocular estimation of area without the aid of instruments. Only in the 1780s did Johann Peter Kling, chief administrator of forests in the Palatinate and Bavaria under Elector Karl Theodor, systematize forest mensuration and cartography into instructions for making forest maps of unprecedented detail.^[28]

[28] On Kling's work, see Erich Bauer, "An der Wiege der deutschen Forstwissenschaft: Forstgeschichtliches aus Kaiserslautern und der Kurpfalz im letzten Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts," Jahrbuch zur Geschichte von Stadt und Kreis Kaiserlautern, 3 (1965), 101–17, on 107–13; Franz Tichy, "Die kurpfälzische Waldstandortskartierung von 1783," Berichte zur deutschen Landeskunde, 20 (1958), 320–6; Johann Keiper, "Hofkammerrat Johann Peter Kling, kurfürstlicher Forstkommissar zu Mannheim," Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter, 30 (1924), 138–47. The first text on forest surveying was J.F. Penther's Praxis geometriae (1729), which was reprinted as late as 1788, but a new wave of manuals and books on this subject appeared after 1770, stimulated by Karl Christoph Oettelt, Practischer Beweis, dass die Mathesis bey dem Forstwesen unentbehrliche Dienste thue (Eisenach, 1765; also 1786, 1798, 1803); and Johann Ehrenfried Vierenklee, Mathematische Anfangsgründe der Arithmetik und Geometrie, in so fern solche denjenigen, die sich dem höchstnötigen Forstwesen auf eine vernünftige und gründliche Weise widmen wollen, zu wissen nöthig sind (Leipzig, 1767; 1797, 1822). An example of the new wave is Instruction für die Land-Messer, welche zu denen, von Sr. Kgl. Majestet allerhöchst verordneten speziellen Vermessungen derer sämmtlicher Herrschaftlicher Heyden und Holtzungen in Ost-Preussen und Lithauen, sollen gebraucht werden (Berlin, 1771). Cf. "Entwicklung der forstlichen Literatur in Deutschland. Zugleich als Überblick über die Entwicklung der Forstwissenschaft vom Ende des Mittelalters bis zur klassischen Zeit," in Kurt Mantel, ed., Deutsche forstliche Bibliographie (Freiburg i. Br.: Universität, Forstgeschichtliches Institut, 1970), iii–xlviii, on xxxiii.

Other fundamental problems also plagued area-based forest management. First, a division of the forest into equal cutting areas did not provide the most useful information to those responsible for fiscal planning and management. They needed to know the amount of firewood or lumber. Correlation of acreage with actual distribution of lumber and firewood required principles not formulated and measurements not routinely executed under the old forestry. Second, the prudent forester could not easily respond to inevitable quirks of nature over the many decades in a single forest cycle, because the area-based system did not provide a flexible method for directly adjusting the harvest from year to year, let alone predicting annual yields over the long cycle from the outset. The most meticulous forest management under these methods, while an improvement over neglect, fell short of the high principles of Kameralwissenschaft .

After midcentury, an approach to forest economy based on the mass or volume of wood gradually displaced area-based systems. The first prominent advocate of wood-mass as the quantitative basis for sound forestry emerged from the holzgerechte Jäger . Johann Gottlieb Beckmann, a forest inspector in Saxony, gave the forest priority over the hunt; his knowledge of forestry derived from experience, not education. Beckmann's deep concern for preserving the wood supply led him to construct a system of forest economy that rested on a practical technique for measuring the quantity of standing wood in the forest. Beckmann instructed his team of assistants, whom he supplied with birch nails of various colors, to walk side by side through the forest at intervals of a few yards. Each member of the formation fixed his gaze to the same side and noted every tree he passed. He made a quick estimate of the size category in which the tree fell and marked it with a nail of the appropriate color. At the end of the day, unused nails were counted and subtracted from the original supply to indicate the number of trees in each category. The forester and his assistants knew from experience the approximate yield of wood from trees in each size category; with multipliers thus assigned, the number of nails used could be converted through a simple calculation into the quantity of standing wood in the forest. Beckmann's case suggests that the clever quantifier need not be a calculator or mathe-

matician nor carry out detailed measurements or stereometric calculations in order to determine the mass of wood. A vigorous and productive author, Beckmann began around 1760 to campaign for the method of forest economy based on wood mass. Soon Beckmannianer sprang up throughout Germany to propagate his ideas.^[29]

Within a few years, a group of mathematically adept foresters followed along the trail cleared by Beckmann. Carl Christoph Oettelt, Johann Vierenklee, and Johann Hossfeld assigned the task of measuring the area of the forest to the Forstgeometer , a surveyor hired to demarcate the borders of the forest, prepare maps, and carry out other prescribed tasks for a set fee.^[30] The geometer, along with the army of marching assistants, gathered the data. Forsttaxation , or forestry assessment—a mix of calculation, analysis, and planning—fell to the chief forester and his superiors. Forest mathematicians like Oettelt and Vierenklee were moved by a new confidence in the power of mathematics to solve problems associated with the conversion of the forest into an equivalent quantity of wood mass. Assessment, the scientific component in Forstwissenschaft , required general principles and techniques based on them. Without them the unrelated numbers and observations reported by foresters and surveyors would overwhelm planners and administrators. Forestry science supplied the necessary organizing principle: "evaluation, or the ascertaining of the mass of wood, which is to be found for a given place at a given time."^[31] Identifying wood mass as the crucial variable of forestry set the stage for quantitative forest management.

[29] For Beckmann's method, see August Bernhardt, Geschichte des Waldeigenthums, der Waldwirthschaft und Forstwissenschaft in Deutschland , 3 vols. (Berlin: J. Springer, 1872–5), 2, 88–90. On his life and publications, see Richard Alexander Hess, Lebensbilder hervorragender Forstmänner und um das Forstwesen verdienter Mathematiker, Naturforscher und Nationalökonomen (Berlin: P. Parey, 1885), 12–3; Mantel and Pacher, Forstliche Persönlichkeiten , 42–4. For a similar method featuring a "Linie von Jägern," see Johann Gleditsch, Systematische Einleitung in die neuere aus ihren eigenthümlichen physikalisch-ökonomischen Gründen hergeleitete Forstwissenschaft , 2 vols. (Berlin: A. Wever, 1774–5), 2, 1142–3.

[30] See Georg Ludwig Hartig, Neue Instructionen für die Königlich-Preussischen Forst-Geometer und Forst-Taxatoren, durch Beispiele erklärt (Berlin: In Commission bey der Kummerischen Buchhandlung, 1819), Table E, "Taxe für die Forst-Geometer."

[31] Späth, Anleitung , 195.