Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

Planting trees was also one of the solutions seized upon by contemporaries who worked to master nature in a different way. Not fire, but sand, was the irritant across many parts of the north German plain. Giant shifting dunes filled the air with fine particles that obscured roads and drifted on to the fields, ruining standing crops. 'With the exception of Libya, few states can boast of being our equal when it comes to sand', wrote Frederick the Great to Voltaire, with rather heavy irony.