Josef Schöffel Award for services to environmental protection.

Josef Schöffel, who was that actually?

Lithograph 1879 and caricature 1873

Who was Josef Schöffel actually? Born in 1832 in Pribam, now in the Czech Republic, into a family of mining officials, he was born into an understanding of the effects of human behavior on nature. He was born into a milieu similarly influenced by the spirit of the Enlightenment as Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) or Charles Darwin (1809-82) and shared a solid basic geological education with these contemporaries, which led Schöffel to the Imperial Geological Survey in Vienna from 1863-68, where he worked on the surveying of the monarchy and the creation of geognostic maps.i

He describes the traumatic years from 1857-63 as a first lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army in his autobiography Erinnerungen an mein Lebeni. Schöffel is part of a turbulent time, in a socially and seismically active place. The strengthening Prussia challenged the sluggish Danube monarchy economically and militarily for supremacy in the German Confederation which was dissolved after the German War of 1866 and led to the founding of the German Empire in 1871 without the participation of the Habsburg monarchy, thus ushering in its downfall.

During Josef Schöffel's lifetime, Vienna and Berlin were among the ten most populous cities in the world, which were the early scenes of industrialization, the labour movement and, to a lesser extent, environmental protection. become. The early industrial revolution manifests itself as a social upheaval on various levels. The dispossessed rural population pushed into cities in search of work, causing them to burst out of their medieval fortifications. Monumental ring roads, such as those in Vienna, which are built in place of city walls and house the institutions of a new social order, bear witness to the Gründerzeit. At the same time, the cities begin to eat inexorably into the surrounding nature.

Population growth of selected cities between 1800 and 1910

The industrial revolution creates an upper middle class with entrepreneurship, which either replaces the aristocracy or merges strongly with it. The result is the bourgeois revolution of 1848, which sweeps across Europe like a bush fire, gives the monarchies their first democratic constitutions and ends the era of the conservative State Chancellor Prince Clemens von Metternich. In Vienna, too, there is a redistribution of power and the Imperial Council moves into the newly built parliament building on the Ringstrasse to represent the people. Josef Schöffel becomes a member of the Imperial Council and Mayor of Mödling in 1873. He therefore had his finger on the pulse of the political events of his time.

The seven most populous cities in the world in 1877

His path into the still young world of democratic politics goes through his commitment to the Vienna Woods, which - thanks to Schöffel's perseverance - is still called Vienna's green lung today. The Vienna Woods is a 45 km long and 20-30 km wide, largely forested low mountain range that lies to the west of Vienna and, as the eastern foothills of the Alps, marks the transition between three ecoregions: the Pannonian, that of the Western European deciduous forests and that of the Alpine coniferous and mixed forests.i The Vienna Woods have been managed as a biosphere reserve since 2003 and were recognized as such by UNESCO in 2005.

During Josef Schöffel's lifetime, things looked bleak for the Vienna Woods. Triggered by the industrial revolution and the associated urbanization of Europe, it was not only the city walls of medieval Vienna that were torn down and magnificent imperialist buildings erected along the Ringstrasse. The city began to expand far beyond its old boundaries. The conflict between urban living space and retreat areas for non-human nature finds a prominent setting in the Vienna Woods and the beginning of an urban environmental movement, which serves as a backdrop for the urbanized Tokyo in the film Pom Poko just a few decades later, and leads to the founding of the first modern environmental education organization, the Friends of Nature, with a hike into the Vienna Woods, in Vienna in 1895.

Das k.k. Reichsratsgebäude (today Parliament) on Vienna's Ringstrasse around 1900

Josef Schöffel recognizes the value of continuous forest areas for the health of ecosystems early on due to his training and his work at the Imperial Geological Institute. When the Reichstag decided to sell large areas of the Vienna Woods in 1870, there was a threat of massive logging. Schöffel, who had been working as a journalist since leaving the Imperial Geological Survey in 1868, began an unprecedented campaign against the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Finance. Ministry of Finance. In a liberal spirit, the Ministry attempted to restructure the precarious state finances by selling off state property and paying off the debts incurred during the war against Prussia.

Austria has only enjoyed freedom of the press for a few years, and daily newspapers are a mass medium with a bright future.i Schöffel recognizes the opportunities this offers him to mobilize against high officials and rich entrepreneurs. The most respected newspaper in Vienna is the Neue Freie Presse, but it represents the liberalism of big business. Schöffel therefore goes to the Neuen Wiener Tagblatt, a younger competitor. It published his first article and all subsequent ones. Twice a week, Schöffel stirred up the mood with accusations of corruption and strong words. He takes aim at the “mafia in the office for the squandering of state assets” and is outraged by the sale of forests to “stock corporations and speculators”.

Transition between the three ecoregions in and around the Vienna Woods

Schöffel also has to put up with a lot himself - including death threats. The finance minister accuses him of “lies and slander”. The public prosecutor's office investigates him for “incitement to hatred and contempt”. He was sued five times for defamation of character. He was never convicted because Schöffel had done his research carefully. He is an investigative journalist with first-class contacts who can prove everything with documents. In 1872, Schöffel won the case and the sale in the Vienna Woods was reversed. A political career followed. Schöffel became mayor of Mödling and was elected to the Imperial Council; over a hundred municipalities made him an honorary citizen.i

View from the Kahlenberg in the Vienna Woods towards Vienna and the Danube in the 19th century

It is understandable that Josef Schöffel should give his name to the environmental protection prize, which has been awarded annually by the state of Lower Austria since 1992. A man whose regional activities can be compared with far better-known  contemporaries such as John Muir, the founder of Yellowstone National Park and the Sierra Club, or the journalist Mark Twain, who reported from the Vienna Reichstag in 1897, gives a resounding name to an award that is intended to honor outstanding commitment to environmental protection and sustainability.i

Vienna in 1850

Why was the Josef Schöffel Prize awarded?

We are therefore delighted to have received the environmental award from the state of Lower Austria on December 5. The prize honored the cooperation between Green Steps, the Lanius Research Association and Die Grünen St. Pölten, which together applied for the protection of 300 old trees in St. Pölten in December 2022 and successfully persuaded the city council as the environmental protection authority to strengthen the protection of urban trees worth preserving after almost 20 years of inactivity: since September 2023, 15 new natural monuments have been designated on the initiative of Green Steps and the Department of Urban Planning has begun the exact mapping of natural monuments.

Gloria Corradini (Ecological Director Green Steps), Leire Vaneeckhaute (ESC Volunteer, Green Steps), Johanna Mikl-Leitner (Governor of Lower Austria), Knut Wimberger (Pedagogical Director Green Steps), Susanne Rosenkranz (Lower Austrian State Councillor for Environmental Protection), Jaba Jabauri (ESC Volunteer, Green Steps), Walter Heimerl (St. Pölten Green Party Councillor)

The environmental education project Big Friendly Giants, which uses a web app to simplify the educational development of urban open spaces for schools and enables project-oriented learning about the local community, was also awarded the EUR 1,600 prize. In view of the increasing heterogeneity of the Austrian population, the project addresses a social focal point: how can more and more people make a peaceful living with fewer resources, especially when they speak different languages and are characterized by different cultures of origin?

In view of the climate, biodiversity and education crisis, the connection between education and actively taking responsibility for one's own living space is probably the most important learning content at present. While national curricula have proven to alienate students from their home communities and abstract learning content leads to indifference and meaninglessness, the Big Friendly Giants environmental education project encourages students and teachers to take an active and creative role in the place where they live by mapping natural and cultural elements in the open space and then bringing them together in interactive routes.

Each mapping can be provided with questions via the web app designed by the association, creating so-called quests. Each quest corresponds to a level, just like in a computer game. Once you have completed all the quests in the city area - there are now more than 30 - you have achieved 100 percent bioregional identity and can justifiably claim that you know your home town like the back of your hand. Ideally, children start walking tours in the 3rd grade of elementary school at the latest, so that by the end of lower school they have experienced all the routes at least twice at different times of the year. 60 research trips over 6 years would mean that teachers go into the city's nature once a month to teach local history in a practical way. That doesn't sound like much, but in the structures of the current education system it is a huge challenge that can only be overcome with the combined efforts of the education directorate, school providers, school management, teaching staff and parents.

Although Green Steps uses an app to scale environmental education, there are significant differences from regular schooling and traditional computer games: the app helps students and teachers to pedagogically capture the open space outside the school building and map learning progress in terms of local nature and culture. Each quest created can be viewed as a permanent classroom that changes its appearance every season and makes the changes in nature easier to understand. In this application, the Green Steps ARK works complementary to well-known software solutions for school administration such as SchoolFox, WebUntis or Socrates for the organization of the learning space surrounding the school building.

For pupils aged 12 and over, however, the web app presents itself as a learning method wrapped in a game that promotes cooperation, systemic understanding and practical problem-solving skills. Quests can be completed by teams of pupils using a device, but each task requires them to engage with the natural environment. Answering questions requires action, e.g. identifying a tree species by feeling the bark; estimating the age of a tree by measuring the circumference of its trunk; determining the architectural style of a house by looking at it closely and comparing it to the suggested answers on the Green Steps ARK.

Older pupils become city planners, game developers and teachers on the Green Steps ARK by testing their creativity in the creation of new quests. They decide which points of interest (POIs) are mapped, where the route goes and which topics are covered in the quests. Again, the web-app only functions as a supporting tool to activate the free space pedagogically. None of the planned routes can be designed or played online. Direct and comprehensive engagement with the respective habitat is always required.

Green Steps thus provides schools with a solution that is innovative in several respects and simultaneously addresses various problems in the education system:
- The focus is shifted from abstract knowledge transfer in the classroom to the teaching of concrete learning content in the open space.
- The often lacking teacher training for the open space is compensated by prepared quests and the competence of teachers to use the open space is effectively trained during the project.
- Instead of exposing students to the competition of standardized individual evaluations, cooperation in the exploration and preservation of the home community is visualized.
- Language acquisition is significantly promoted through multidimensional engagement with the open space.
- Lack of interest in the school is largely eliminated through concrete hands-on projects.

Scaling Place-based Education Through a Networked Game
Mobile Campus 4.0 as an educational strategy for climate change adaptation

Interested in implementing the project in your home community?
Establish a place of learning: https://ark.greensteps.me/communities
Get to know the St. Pölten pilot project: https://ark.greensteps.me/commons/stp#quests
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The map shows the inner city and the already built-up districts 2-9, while districts 10-23 are not yet part of the city but belong to the surrounding area. Similar to Krakow, a park belt surrounds the old town, the Glacis, which in Vienna had to make way for the magnificent buildings on the Ring.