This thesis interrogates the ways in which often-fraught relationships between the human and nonhuman are represented in German literature and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on the emerging literary discourse on the ecoGothic, it argues that writers during this period of literary modernism draw upon the Gothic as a mode which destabilises control and order. The Gothic here is found in violent and dangerous natural environments, in the collapse of boundaries between human and nonhuman, and in the destabilisation of individuals attempting to navigate nature. This thesis analyses literary works which cast light on the Anthropocene, by exploring the limitations of human control over the physical environment through texts in which the representation of the natural environment also reflects internal crises and conflicts.

Chapter One explores the representation of the haunted coastline in Theodor Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter, investigating the conflict between human reason and rationality, and the persistence of uncontrollable nature, which acts as a metaphor for fraught human/environment interactions in the Anthropocene. Chapter Two continues the consideration of watery spaces with an exploration of Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig, looking at the way in which the dark language and imagery of swamp space reflects repressed desire and deviance. The following chapters continue to interrogate the relationship of control and mastery which exists between the human and the nonhuman, and the ways in which the Gothic mode challenges or destabilises this hierarchical relationship. Chapter Three investigates early twentieth-century plant horror, exploring the ways in which the sensory and somatic characteristics of plants are heightened and made horrifying in order to destabilise the human presence in the texts explored. The investigation of plants continues in Chapter Four, which focusses on the Jugendstil artist Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald, her depiction of wild nature, and the impact of colonialism on her representation of the natural world. The thesis concludes with Chapter Five exploring the depiction of icescapes, deep time, and the violent resurgence of the prehistoric in Alfred Döblin’s epic novel Berge Meere und Giganten.