An Environmental History of the Danube

Carson Fellow Martin Schmid discusses his work on writing the first environmental history of the Danube river; Schmid’s research is part of a larger project on the Danube at the Alpen-Adria-University in Vienna. The Danube has been substantially transformed since 1800 and is, according to Schmid, the most important river in Europe. In order to provide a better understanding of both the development and the importance of the Danube, Schmid begins his history in the 1500s. Martin Schmid is an assistant professor for environmental history and interdisciplinary communications at Alpen-AdriaUniversity Klagenfurt-Graz-Wien in Austria. A historian by profession, Martin is fascinated with environmental history as an interdisciplinary field, crossing the "great divide" between humanities and natural sciences.