Nature conservation is a still recent invention of western urban society and is really more self-serving than of use to nature. With its tremendous complexity, abundancy and dynamics, nature overwhelms human comprehension and makes difficult the search for criteria for its preservation. Moreover, sentiments and emotions, which also tend to absolutize, are often stronger than reasonable actions. The transition into the urban-industrial era in the 19th century gave rise to modernization of land utilization to fulfil the growing urban need for rural supply. As a consequence, the landscape lost many of its near-natural components, and this roused amongst the urban middle class (not in the countryside, where it took place!) the nature conservation movement. The well-being of the townspeople, however, is based on intensive land utilization, which was also conceived of by responsible urban citizens. Responsibilities for conservation of nature and for the security of supply of the people, which also overlap each other, have been in constant conflict since that time. Soon nature conservation became a government function starting with the creation of many small nature reserves for the sake of the preservation of living nature, in the form of rare or beautiful faunal and plant species. But the cultural landscape surrounding and affecting the protected areas was initially not taken into consideration. The first German nature conservation act, passed in 1935, decreed the conservation of ‘nature in all of its appearances’ and included the maintenance of landscapes (but not their design), but the act’s paragraphs only concern living nature and did not have any influence on land use changes.