Over the past thirty years, the use of wind energy has successively developed into one of the most important pillars of climate-friendly energy systems. In recent times, this form of energy generation has even been described as an energy of peace and freedom. Looking back at the history of wind energy use in the long 20th century, this decisive importance within European energy systems did not initially emerge. Rather, for a long time, narratives of backwardness and practical marginalization in research dominated. The project deals with this field of tension in a transnational perspective.

Along the discourses, the changing constellations of wind energy knowledge and real historical practices of wind energy use since the end of the 1870s, the dissimilarities of wind energy use in the respective historical contexts of the neighboring countries and energy partners Germany and France are highlighted. This triad makes it possible to uncover the discrepancies between narratives, knowledge, and practices and to clarify in which historical situations the use of wind energy was discursively and materially resorted to. The picture that emerges is much more nuanced than the established narrative of decline and renaissance in the twentieth century would suggest, for during this period wind energy was integrated into practices of modernization, it was established in narratives of crisis, and its meaningful use was oriented more to local conditions of resources, work, and life rather than to overarching criteria of rationalization and efficiency.

The findings from the research project on the use of wind energy offer historical orientation knowledge for a better understanding of the status quo, a deeper basis for the assessment of current debates and a broadening of perspectives on mostly diverse decision-making options that only retrospectively sometimes appear to be without alternatives.